Hysteria

Official Selection | Tirana International Film Festival (AL)
Official Selection | Sao Carlos Videodance Festival (BR)
Outdoors large-scale projection | PROBE festival, TCD (IE)
Gallery installation | Science Gallery Dublin | Nov. 2015-Feb. 2016 (IE)

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DOES THE BODY RECORD AND REPLAY THE TRAUMAS OF THE PAST?

'Hysteria' is a physical performance for-the-camera which responds to imagery, sensation, and ideas around the invisibility of psychological pain, and the visible manifestations of trauma.
Created by Maurice Kelliher and performed by dancer Daniel Whiley (Punchdrunk, Sweetshop Revolution)—Hysteria also integrates archive footage of patients from Netley Hospital (1917) who present with symptoms PTSD—or as it was referred to then, "combat hysteria", "war neurosis", or more commonly, "Shell shock".
The film communicates, viscerally, a distress which is beyond language.

Note on the creative starting point:
'Hysteria — as a disease, and later, a set of symptoms — was characterised by unusual physical behaviours believed to be brought on by trauma or a disorder of the nervous system.
Psychoanalysis had its origins in the study of hysteria: Freud was able to explain that the physical manifestations of hysteria were not a result of nerves or disorders in the physical body. Instead, symptoms were brought on by mental trauma. Freud was among the first to assert that hysteria happens in the mind.'
— Description of 'hysteria' (the "medical condition") from the Wellcome Collection

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Press/feedback

"A multidimensional masterpiece. This work gives physicality to the lamentations of trauma. It is the jewel of the exhibition (on trauma)."
—Andrea Bandelli | CEO Science Gallery International

"Visually impactful...The rawness of traumatic stress is rendered as choreography—intimate, dreamful, and hypnotizing"
—Science (magazine)

"The most compelling experience of the TRAUMA exhibition for many of our visitors"
—Lynn Scarff | Director | Science Gallery Dublin

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www.mauricekelliher.com