Timothy Kelly writes: In 1997 I was an involuntary patient in Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute, a state psychiatric hospital in Chattanooga Tennessee. My mother had been a patient in the same hospital in the 1960’s. The Moccasin Bend project explores my experience in and of the hospital in the context of family and broader cultural narratives.
Moccasin Bend works to portray my experience of psychosis, intergenerational trauma and the sometimes frightening conditions in public psychiatric institutions in the U.S. through a collection of experiments in image, text and sound.
Borrowing from mediums ranging from language poetry and sound art, to American folk music and photo documentary, Moccasin Bend works to create a layered impression of these experiences using interdisciplinary methods, scholarship artistic representations and memoir.
Visit the online exhibit here.