AN EXPERIMENT REVISTED (2019)
Found Footage Montage by Annika Larsson
10.21 min, SD, 3:4, b/w, Found Footage, Stereo Audio,

Research, Montage, Sound, Production: Annika Larsson / Research Assistant: Isabel Gatzke

This found footage montage builds upon footage that was recorded during The Spring Grove Experiment . It was an experiment of LSD studies performed from 1963 to 1976 on patients with psychotic illnesses at the Spring Grove Clinic in Catonsville, Maryland, all conducted in Cottage 13, a building on the Spring Grove State Hos- pital grounds. The environment in Cottage 13 was constructed so that it emitted a positive and optimistic atmo- sphere to ensure that the patients did not have a negative experience while taking the LSD treatment. Even the sounds, smells, and objects in Cottage 13 were carefully conditioned. Here they were given a microscopic dose of LSD and during the 14-hour treatment, the patients underwent psychotherapy. Peg McGinnis was one of a few thousand mental patients treated with LSD in Cottage 13. Her story was broadcast by CBS News in a primetime documentary, “The Spring Grove Experiment,” in 1965. The montage AN EXPERIMENT REVISTED (2019) re- vists this documentary through a new montage where it leaves out the documentary’s orginal voice-over in order to break with the hierachcal doctor-patient relation, to instead open a virtual space that allows for pauses, silence and ruptures and to Peg McGinnis own re ections under the in uence of the drug.
Link:
https://vimeo.com/452686491/93fe797206