For Baltimore filmmaker and multimedia artist Dina Fiasconaro, storytelling has always been a way to illuminate experiences that often remain hidden.
A professor of Film and Moving Image at Stevenson University, Fiasconaro’s work has long explored themes of mental health, family history and women’s experiences. Her latest project, Uh Huh Her, expands that focus through a multimedia installation and live performance examining substance use disorder, recovery and the lasting consequences of viral overdose videos.
Opening at Submersive HQ in Baltimore on July 10, the four-channel video installation combines projected film, surveillance footage, immersive sound and live performance to challenge audiences’ assumptions about substance use disorder, privacy and empathy.
“I’ve always been interested in the stories that aren’t being told,” Fiasconaro said. “I want people to see individuals with substance use disorder as multifaceted human beings.”
Born in Oceanport, New Jersey, Fiasconaro studied television, radio and film at Syracuse University before earning a master’s degree in directing from Columbia University. While she initially envisioned a career in law, her love of writing and storytelling eventually led her to filmmaking.
“I was always drawn to creative writing,” she said. “Once I discovered filmmaking, screenwriting and directing became the natural extension of that interest.”
Over more than two decades as a filmmaker, Fiasconaro has worked across documentary, narrative and experimental formats. Many of her projects center women protagonists and draw inspiration from true stories, often exploring mental health and personal histories.
Those themes have become increasingly intertwined with her own lived experience. Fiasconaro, who is in her 19th year of recovery, said it took nearly two decades before she felt comfortable incorporating stories related to substance use disorder into her artistic practice.
“It feels like all of my identities have finally integrated,” she said. “I’m a filmmaker, an educator, a person in recovery and someone who cares deeply about social issues.”
The inspiration for Uh Huh Her emerged during research for a previous installation centered on a father’s response to his daughter’s fatal overdose. While researching, Fiasconaro repeatedly encountered videos online showing people experiencing overdoses in public spaces while bystanders recorded them rather than intervening.
“Someone will be overdosing in a public place like a store, and rather than immediately calling 911 or maybe giving the person CPR or seeing if you could wake the person up or seeing if anybody has Narcan, the very first thing people do is whip out their phones and start recording. And so it becomes this spectacle,” Fiasconaro said.
One video in particular stayed with her: a mother overdosing in a store while her young child wandered nearby, crying and trying to get her attention.
“It made me think about how these moments become permanent,” Fiasconaro said. “People recover, but these videos can continue to follow them for years.”
The installation recreates a fictionalized overdose video through multiple perspectives. A large central screen presents what appears to be a viral YouTube clip of a mother overdosing while bystanders watch and record. Additional screens shift the audience’s viewpoint to the mother’s daughter, the mother herself and surveillance-camera footage that reveals the broader scene.
For performer Clare Lefebure, who portrays the mother in Uh Huh Her, the project offered the opportunity to explore addiction through a nuanced and deeply human lens.
“It has been a really powerful experience. This is the first time I’ve played a character experiencing addiction whose experiences overlap with some of my own,” Lefebure said. “It’s been an interesting lens through which I look at my own past, look at the experiences of other people who have been on journeys through addiction and recovery. It looks like the different selves that we all become about our lives, whether that’s a using self or a sober self and an understanding of how we relate to those selves and also how other people see and relate to those parts of us.”
Lefebure collaborated with Fiasconaro on the live monologue that follows the video installation. During each performance, the actor rises from the floor where she has remained motionless during the video loop and addresses the audience directly, expanding the story beyond the moment captured on camera.
“She had the concept down of wanting to explore some of these disturbing videos that you can find on YouTube or online where people have recorded other people who are experiencing overdoses in public, and then those videos get shared online, and somewhat unsurprisingly, a lot of the reactions and responses to those videos when their shared are really critical,” Lefebure said. “They come in with a very single notion of what a person in active addiction is, and what an overdose is. We wanted to explore the experience of a person who has had their worst moments, their rock bottom, really crystallized in perpetuity, in this sort of online viral video, and that experience looks like, from a multitude of angles.”
The monologue traces the character’s journey through recovery, reclaiming a narrative otherwise frozen at its lowest point.
“Thousands of people might only ever see that one moment,” Fiasconaro said. “I wanted to extend the story beyond where the video ends.”
The project also examines broader questions surrounding consent, spectatorship and digital culture.
Kelly Ryan, director of outreach for Love in the Trenches, a Baltimore nonprofit that supports families affected by substance use disorder and overdose, said the work raises important questions about the ethics of filming vulnerable people during medical emergencies.
“People don’t always think about the long-term effects,” Ryan said. “Someone may recover, apply for a job years later and still have a video of one of the worst moments of their life circulating online.”
Beyond the installation itself, Uh Huh Her incorporates direct community engagement. Volunteers from Love in the Trenches will provide free Narcan training and overdose-response education during select performances, while Narcan kits will be available throughout the run. Narcan, or Naloxone, is an over-the-counter emergency treatment designed to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
Ryan said harm reduction efforts remain critical because overdoses can affect anyone, not only people commonly associated with substance use disorder.
“We always compare Narcan to a fire extinguisher,” Ryan said. “You hope you never need it, but every building has one.”
For Fiasconaro, combining art with advocacy is intentional. She hopes audiences leave not only with a greater understanding of recovery but also with practical tools to support their communities.
The project was supported through a Rubys Artist Grant, one of several Baltimore-based funding opportunities that have helped bring her recent work to life.
“I want people to move beyond awareness,” Fiasconaro said. “Whether that’s changing the language they use, carrying Narcan or volunteering, I hope the work encourages action.”
Fiasconaro said that showing her work feels especially timely.
“The city has a lot of harm reduction services. You know, because there are many ways to be in recovery and it doesn’t always have to be abstinence based, right?” Fiasconaro said. “I really appreciate that the city is taking whatever steps that they can to mitigate harm and offer resources to community members in need. And so that’s why I also feel like it’s timely and important that I’m showcasing the work in Baltimore City.”
As audiences move through the installation, they encounter not only a story about overdose but also a story about survival — one that challenges the single, often sensationalized narratives that dominate public conversations about substance use disorder and addiction.
“There’s a really abysmal statistic that only two in 10 people ever fully recover. But people do recover. I’m living proof that you can be in recovery for 19 years and totally put your life back together,” Fiasconaro said. “There are so many of those stories to tell that Hollywood isn’t telling. So my goal is to tell those stories that don’t get told.”
The installation is free to attend with showings beginning on Friday, July 10, running through Sunday, July 12. Tickets for the event can be found here
“People recover,” Fiasconaro said. “There are so many recovery stories that aren’t being told. Those are the stories I want to tell.”
