Heather Cassano

Madness

multi-channel video, with sound

2022

MADNESS is a three-channel video installation featuring archival video, moving imagery from mental institution cemeteries, and text-on-screen detailing the number of graves present at each gravesite. The archival video is taken from a series of films produced in 1951 and 1952 featuring Dr. Heinz Lehmann describing eight forms of “mental symptoms” as they appear in the mentally ill. The cemeteries featured in MADNESS include gravesites in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York. Mental institution and state school cemeteries exist in every state in the contiguous United States.

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