Tessa de Vries [1954] NL
Biography
Being the first-born, I look after my mother
At age fifteen, I start going out and fall maniacally in love with men
At age sixteen, I start smoking pot, and escape from my mother’s terrorizing reign
At age seventeen, I run away from home
At age eighteen, I am raped by a man while drunk
At age nineteen, I can no longer have children
At age twenty, I experiment with heroin, cocaine, and spirituality
At age twenty-one, I use mushrooms, LSD, pot, and tranquilizers, and enjoy my hallucinations
At age twenty-five, I violently break off my connections with my husband and the outside world
At age twenty-six, my sister has become a heroin addict
At age twenty-seven, I am clean and alone
At age thirty, I comfort myself with homegrown cannabis and lock myself into a closet for months at the time
At age thirty-two, I am addicted and psychotic without treatment
At age thirty-nine, I go into rehab, build a ship, and survive on the thought of love
At age forty, I work as a caregiver in a rehab program
At age forty-three, I fall back on the use of homegrown cannabis as a substitute for love
At age fifty-one, I am compulsively in love and psychotic
At age fifty-one, I attack my mother
At age fifty-one, I am sober
From a dialogue with the participant and with the aid of the matrix a biography of basic facts is developed, which portrays the person’s life as a sequence of events and decisions, of acts and reactions.
The texts of the biographies are spoken by the participants themselves, and recorded for the audio modules of the Baby Dolls and the project’s audio archive.