Suki Chan - CONSCIOUS

"A truly empathetic and respectful - and in some ways strangely hopeful - articulation of the lived experience of someone living with dementia.”

Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin, author and visiting research fellow, King's College London

Trailer

A mesmerising and intimate journey into the personal experiences of author Wendy Mitchell as she navigates the fog of dementia.

Conceived through a collaborative process with Wendy, the film interweaves audio testimonies with abstract dramatisations and re-imaginings of her hallucinations, misperceptions and poignant moments in her life.

FOG IN MY HEAD juxtaposes real-world imagery with abstract scientific material, blending poetic vision, subjective viewpoints with post-human perspectives.

The audience is taken on a sumptuous visual and aural journey: from the centre of a natural beehive, a developing brain, a home, an office and a forest. Connecting these distinct spaces is fog. “Fog descending on the brain” is Wendy’s metaphor for how the neurocognitive disorder makes her feel.

Fog is an analogy for the confusion, disorientation, isolation as well as the strange comfort that dementia brings.

Timelapse confocal microscopy imagery provided William Constance, Darren Williams, Claudio Araya, Jonathan Clarke, Sinziana Pop and Rachel Moore, Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, King's College London.

Music and sound design by award winning composer, Dominik Scherrer.

Commissioned by FLAMIN Productions through FILM LONDON Artists’ Moving Image Network in association with the Bluecoat and support from Arts Council England.

FOG IN MY HEAD is the third film from CONSCIOUS, a multi-platform project bringing together the diverse, subjective perspectives of scientists and ordinary people, whose stories unwrap layers of thinking and preconceptions about individual and collective consciousness.

FOG

FOG is a companion 360º video work into the world of Wendy Mitchell. Wendy's home emerges from a cloud of fog as her voice explains how she uses visual signifiers around the home to trigger her memory and help live her life as independently as possible.

FOG is commissioned by The Bluecoat with support from the Garfield Weston Foundation.