Penetralia – Janeen Peckford (2022) – FESCH.TV

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

A few months ago, I discovered a word that guided me to the place in my body where obsessive compulsive disorder was hidden. The Merriam-Webster definition of Penetralia reads, “the innermost or most private parts”. The term is formed from the Latin word Penetralis, for “inner” and Penetrare, “to penetrate” (Merriam-Webster). OCD pierced my skin and vanished inside my body, impossible to consciously locate. I was just aware of it but could not put it into words so someone could meaningfully investigate it. Words always failed me when I tried to describe this place, or thing.

Thus, it was my intention to depict this locality on film. It was challenging to record something that occurred mentally and physically, internally, and externally— An experimental approach was fool proof. It allowed me to vividly embody the unintelligible, as unintelligibility serves as an experiment. My daytime scenes are handheld, using a mixture of zoom and push-in or pull-back techniques for a disorienting effect. The shaking images portray a first-person point-of-view, from the perspective of an erratic gaze. The screen recordings of Google sequences are real searches from the semester that have often delayed my creativity. Often, these obsessions interrupted my workflow in a similar fashion as how it disturbs the making of this puppetry film.

When night begins at the 1:20 timestamp, the shots are largely static. I used a tripod so I could mimic an out-of-body experience. The astral projection occurs once the first-person view is removed. The night scenes are consumed by obsession and compulsions. I used an LED light to create a dreamlike atmosphere with an otherworldly glow— This is the “Penetralia”, the innermost place in the mind. It becomes most potent once the light transforms into an orb, before breaking the fourth wall and “waking” the viewer. After these night sequences, I made the following day grim and lack colour to serve the exhaustion and burnout from a night occupied by disorder. My hand becomes a lacklustre puppet, and I must force my own body to perform. Further, my compulsions are witnessed once again in my repetitive locking of the door. I spent too much time in the Penetralia, so even the day has been penetrated. That is the problem with OCD, the more time you allow it to stir inside the mind, the harder it is to separate the OCD thoughts and actions from ordinary ones.

Initially, the puppetry and the making of a puppet theatre was to be a major element of the film. However, it became clear to me that the story I wanted to tell was one of intrusive thoughts and compulsions that make distracting tasks crafting a project troublesome. The making of this film was genuinely interrupted by these cyclical thoughts, so instead of making it a piece about puppetry, I formed a film about my ambitions crumbling as I became overwhelmed by my own idea. When my work is postponed by having to leave my home and rumination becomes uncontrollable at night, the film dissolves into an homage to the concepts that a distressed mind cannot realistically complete. Nearing the close of the film, my hand is seen going through the motions of finishing the task, held up with string; as the film is not what I had planned it to be and that is something I must live with.