Freedom Of Speach

For my final project, I wanted to do a self study about ADHD and anxiety. I created an installation that was taken place in a stairwell with the teddy bear, holding a cell phone while loud noises are playing that I go throughout the stairwell. At the age of the years old I got diagnosed with ADHD, and got testing every three years since that date. From there as I got older, I was later diagnosed with anxiety as most of the time ADHD, and anxiety come hand-in-hand. I’m passionate about this topic because while research about ADHD is being done, there’s still a gray area in research behind it. for this project, I wanted to reflect, and allow my viewer to step inside the feeling of what it’s like to have anxiety with ADHD: The nonstop thoughts racing through your head that jumble together to the point where you don’t even know what’s making you anxious, all you know is that you are. 

I researched various topics to find out which topic of conversation would bring out the most emotion when talking to the general public. As we know the year being 2020 for this past November, there was an election, and judging by social media, there was a lot emotion behind it. I did personal research on my end as well see if that was actually true, and I decided to make a post on my social media to see how much engagement I would get: That post had the most engagement out of any of my other posts to date. 

When you first enter the room viewers are engulfed by the loud noises that are happening around them, unsure of where to look. But when you look down at the teddy bear, and the phone in its hand, you realize how small the device is. The device is supposed to represent my own problems and how big they really are. The space in the stairwell is supposed to represent my headspace as to how loud my thoughts are and how thoughts echo in an ADHD mind and bounce off of eachother. I put a teddy bear on a pedestal with my phone in his hand while the monitor is playing videos that people have posted about the election. I wanted to get videos from the Internet from the public to verify my research that this topic drives the public’s emotions. The concert video seat back on the monitor for the slower feedback with the voice is still in the background you’re supposed to represent my thoughts an individual thoughts. I did not want the audio to match up with the video being displayed, because I wanted to mimic the mind of someone with ADHD. The bear is supposed to represent who I am as a person, and to try and let the viewer empathize with me or allow the viewer to see themselves within the bear. The bear is staring at my phone with loud chaotic noises ringing through the stairwell to show how overwhelming the inside noises are versus how big the problems are on the screen. I would say that the audio is the focal point of my piece because stepping into my headspace (being the stairwell) is what I’m trying to portray, not my day-to-day life or what people see on the outside. 

This piece is not about politics.This is not to say that politics are not important. Rather, I use politics as the subject in my work to focus the viewers on the feelings that stand behind the raw emotions, not emotions that are caused by a situation. I’m using the topic of politics to create a sense of emotion within my viewer. The point of the piece was to not bring the viewer into my own personal anxieties, but rather I wanted to create a sense of anxiety within them, a sense of uncertainty. I want my viewers to step into my headspace whenever they step into the stairwell to understand what it’s like to live in the mind with someone with ADHD.