By Association is a chain curatorial platform for artists to collectively experiment with the practice of associative thinking. Across three nights of song, dance, the romantic comedy genre, and poetic performance, Ricky (YATTA), Hazel Katz and Rebecca Nieto address the interior and social worlds of depression and psychosis.

Mental illness is inherently social. Across three nights of song, dance, the romantic comedy genre, and poetic performance, Ricky (YATTA), Hazel Katz and Rebecca Nieto address the interior and social worlds of depression and psychosis.

“Who do we become after rebuilding our psyches again and again?” is Ricky’s injunction to 2019’s By Association performance collaboration. The question is importantly open-ended, and undergirds three nights of performances that address depression, psychosis, and the world of mental illness. In their songs, poetry, and dance, Ricky explores “mental illness” and psychological “splitting” as an ongoing reaction to oppressive environments. Hazel Katz will screen a scene from a feature film in progress, a romantic comedy about the precariousness of an intimate relationship of two people with mental illness. The scene will include a live score composed by Ricky and dialogue written by Rebecca Nieto. The movie asks whether suicide is a human right and what type of care work is possible between two sick people. Rebecca Nieto will perform from a visual poetic project entitled “Like A System, Meaning Itself”, which elevates language, metaphor, and the archive of “stigma” to examine sociality when we feel most isolated, the occult and utopic practices of vitality that resist the regulatory systems that reward “wellness” and punish neurodivergence.