Every therapist would be proud of him. In his video art, Erik van Lieshout generally gets himself quite deliberately into embarrassing situations, touches on taboo topics, or drags relationships in front of the camera that most would rather keep in the dark or, if anything, discuss in abstract terms. The protagonists of his videos are family members, friends, drug addicts, people with disabilities, racists, foreigners, or even any “idiot” on the street. Arguably, he does overstep the boundaries of political correctness at times, but this seems to be the point. His goal is to act out, to delve right into our fears and the things nobody wants to talk about. If the product of this action makes viewers ill at ease, we can only wonder how the artist must feel: “My challenge is to lose control…. Because it’s only when you lose control that you have the feeling of freedom. In fact I am a control freak who is trying to lose control in order to get himself into the craziest possible situations, and thus get over his fear.” However, even when van Lieshout would like to make us believe that he is engaged in a therapeutic, self-healing process by making these films, we must not forget that his videos are not entirely authentic journals; they are also artificial, often involving complex narrative structures and editing. The resulting “documentation” of both real and painstakingly constructed moments is what makes his work interesting.

In his work UP! (2005), van Lieshout takes the viewer on a survey of the classic themes of psychoanalysis. It starts with—and how could it be otherwise—his confrontation with his mother. Handing her his camera, he takes her to a small forest near her house to reenact childhood memories with her. The film then switches to the office of a therapist, who notes a connection between his dominant mother and his fear of strong women. This situation fades to a scene in which van Lieshout looks at the video recordings done with his mother, commenting on them in therapeutic terms. We then see clips from sessions with a male sexual therapist, a self-help group, and a foot reflexology massage, in addition to some footage of nights in hotel rooms in which he is engaged in solitary self-analysis and cannot fall asleep due to a feeling of tension. As if in passing, the therapy sessions also deal with his father’s death, his capacity to deal with criticism, and his degree of tolerance. Oh, and there is also van Lieshout’s stomach ailment.

The film’s dense sequence of classic Freudian themes would render the work somewhat contrived, were it not for the fact van Lieshout is truly immersed in these situations. His tension is palpable at each moment, and the tears he sheds at the therapist’s over his unnurturing mother and his dead father are real. Thus, skillfully staging his psychological state yet all the while being truly affected, van Lieshout creates an indissoluble ambivalence—two mutually exclusive components nevertheless come together to create a whole in the video. In this context, the camera plays a decisive role as a third component. Furthermore, in two crucial locations, the therapist’s office and the (nocturnal) hotel rooms, the camera changes its function.

The camera serves as an observer or actor for most scenes, which seem specifically orchestrated for it. For example, in the first scene the camera assumes the point of view of the mother, and in the sex therapist’s office, the camera becomes a third-party observer. Moreover, when van Lieshout reviews the “mother scene,” it is unclear whether he is addressing his comments to his colleague Core, who appears in van Lieshout’s films every so often and who is present in the room behind the camera. However, at the therapist’s and in the hotel room, the function of the camera assumes a slightly different role. In the hotel room, the eye of the camera confirms to van Lieshout at every moment that he exists; it gives his fears the possibility of articulating themselves because he is recording them on film. He talks to himself by talking to the camera. Although the “one-on-one” between van Lieshout and the camera isn’t quite as apparent in the therapy sessions, the displacement functions just the same. As if lacking full trust in the camera’s presence, which is, after all, supposed to mirror the artist and legitimatize him, he nonetheless needs the assurance it provides that he is not disappearing.