An immersive video installation, created from verbatim scripts, authored by people with lived experience of a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
“BPD” is one of the most stigmatised of all mental health diagnoses – both in the public imagination and within the health sector itself. As such, it has been criticised as a “highly contentious and damaging label” (1). Movements campaigning for its abolition point to the high correlation between childhood abuse or neglect and “BPD”, arguing that by labelling someone with a “personality disorder” we focus on what is wrong with the person—the flaws in their personality–rather than on what happened to them. The alternative would be to approach the internal experience of “BPD” as an understandable response to trauma.
The characters in this piece share their experiences of this label, describing histories of trauma and illuminating the impact of relationships with caregivers, friends, family and service-providers. Their stories ‘from the inside’, help us to understand experiences such as the urge to self-harm or the feeling of intense emotion, making sense of behaviours that are often simply regarded as symptoms of ‘disorder’. They also reveal the various way in which the longer term impacts of trauma can be supported and effectively managed, highlighting above all the importance of human connection.
These moving and inspiring stories of painful experiences are shared in the spirit of openness and compassionate listening. The installation intentionally evokes the space of an imagined group encounter where people commit to holding a space for feelings and for respectful listening without judgement.
‘We’re just gonna call it all BPD’ is designed to be experienced as an immersive installation, in which 3 life-sized figures appear on screens that form a circle completed by 3 chairs in the viewing space. Premiered in the ensemble, Spaces Between People, for The Big Anxiety festival exhibition, Archives of Feeling, this intimate listening circle was intended to support viewers to ‘sit with’ difficult emotions.
‘We’re just gonna call it all BPD’ builds on research from an Australian Research Council [ARC] Linkage project led by Renata Kokanović, exploring narratives of people who have received a diagnosis of BPD (2).
Participants in this creative project developed verbatim scripts in collaboration with fEEL, ARC Laureate lab at UNSW. The video was created in partnership with UTS (Media Arts).
Credits:
Script authors: Jess Dee, Linnie M, Kaz, Kate, Anon., Anon.
Director and Producer: Jill Bennett
Cinematography and video post-production: Greg Ferris
Production Manager: Gail Kenning
Production Designer: Volker Kuchelmeister
Script editors: Jill Bennett, Gail Kenning, Emma Seal and authors
Actors: Audley Anderson, Renee Lim, Angela Johnston, Angeline Penrith, Deborah Pollard, Elaine Paton.
Research team: Renata Kokanović (lead), Emma Seal, Tamara Borovica (Critical mental health research group, Social& Global Studies Centre, RMIT); Jill Bennett (fEEL, UNSW); Natasha Swingler, Karolina Krysinska, Jess Dee, Linnie M, and other anonymous participants.
(1) Warrender, D, Bain, H, Murray, I, Kennedy, C. Perspectives of crisis intervention for people diagnosed with “borderline personality disorder”: An integrative review. J Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs. 2021; 28: 208– 236. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpm.12637
(2) https://www.healthtalkaustralia.org/borderline-personality/about-the-project/.
