That Which Is Possible

That Which Is Possible is a portrait of a community of painters, sculptors, musicians and writers making work at the Living Museum, an art-space on the grounds of a large state-run psychiatric facility in Queens, New York. Shot over the course of two years and structured across the arc of a day, the film observes with an intimate lens and unspools like a musical, both bracing and tender. That Which Is Possible explores the liberatory and reparative functions that creative action has for a group of artists drawn together by shared struggle.

The title, That Which Is Possible, points to several things at once: the Living Museum as a place where a variety of ways of being are possible, where one can paint or sculpt or write or play music, or simply be left alone for a moment outside the temporal and spatial control of the modern psychiatric institution; the way this moment outside of control allows for the possibility of spontaneous interaction, openness, and even joy; the possibility that the Living Museum might serve as a kind of template for a more humane and holistic approach to mental illness; and the utopian possibility that the Living Museum and places like it might serve as transformational fulcrum points for larger social changes.