Group Therapy is a video which shows pictures of demonstrations regarding political issues, mainly linked with Arab countries. The Gulf war, the occupation of Palestine, the embargo, the war in Afghanistan prompt people to get out in the streets.
These pictures showing gatherings of people were either filmed in Morocco and in France between 1998 and 2003 or directly captured on tv screens, the main idea being that they can be used as a form of therapy.

Inside the group, the individual manages to express his disagreement and also to roar out his hatred ; the strength and euphoria of the group even lead people to stamp on flags and effigies of political figures and burn them as well. All these acts staged by the crowd have a strong symbolical meaning and are akin to group psychotherapeutic practices in which participants hit a cushion which symbolizes the object of their anger and suffering. Demonstrations can thus work as a therapy when individuals manage to overcome their mental blocks thanks to the support and complicity of the other demonstrators.
In Arab dictatorships, such gestures usually occur more often during demonstrations because the latter are virtually the only opportunity they have to express their indignation and their exasperation which don't necessarily have any direct link with the reason for the demonstration. The demonstration thus becomes a way to release their emotions, the intellectual aspects being left aside to the benefit of affects, screams, gestures, movements and emotions.
In an article published in the Moroccan newspaper "L'opinion", Saïd Afoulous explains : "This work of compulsion made to read in these pictures leads us to understand that beyond the character of resistance and awakening of consciousness which the commitment against the war represents, there is something else, people who express themselves, who speak out their minds and that's where group therapy takes place.

Art video has come to feed upon television's hegemony, TV having become a must to be linked to the world, that is to be informed but also to be manipulated and passively indoctrinated. Art Video may be one the proper tools to resist television tyranny by taking care of analysing the flow of pictures, by twisting and shaping them to create meaning."


2002-2003 - France - 18 min 40