Watch it here: Youtube – I Have Lost Myself
Vimeo – I Have Lost Myself
If memory is the core of our identity, what happens to our sense of self when it is lost?
“The more I performed as my mother the more I became her.
I am slowly losing myself just as my mother is losing herself.
I’m taking on my mother’s identity by performing her, by caring for her and writing about her. By shooting a film a day I’m forced to film when I don’t always want to.”
I Have Lost Myself are the words spoken by Doctor Alzheimer’s first diagnosed patient with Alzheimer’s disease. When my mother was diagnosed I became her full-time carer.
The Manchester School of Art MFA Photography (2017) multi-channel video and sound installation, I Have Lost Myself and Give Me the Key, is a powerful and disturbing compilation from 300+ videos, depicting the raw and honest portrait of living with dementia and the blurring of artist process.
I Have Lost Myself documents the daily rehearsals and technical experiments of Give Me the Key, filmed daily over thirty days for a future live art performance. What unfolds is the colliding of performance and the every day as the artist slowly loses her sense of self.
I Have Lost Myself is a powerful and disturbing statement on family relationships and responsibility, where art and the every day inevitably collide.
I Have Lost Myself – HD Video, 28:09 minutes, color/sound