A social art process for collectively bearing witness to stories of war, migration, persecution.
Constitued by: Public marathon readings. Listening in silence. Walking in silence.
Film om OUR STORIES (11 min)
About OUR STORIES 2022:
”Doaa al Zamel left Syria because of the war and we are going to read, listen to and walk with the testimony of her detrimental journey towards refuge in Sweden.
Every period of reading is framed by the sound of a bell to mark that we will listen in silence. Anyone that wishes to read can use the sound of another bell to indicate this, and the book will pass on to them. On the last day of the reading we will do a pilgrimage in silence for three hours, starting and ending at the point where we have taken part of Doaa’s story. Every participant is free to come and go as they wish”
”Artistic processes can carry breakthrough, transformation, repairing and mending. To do this they must go to where emotions and intellect are in a fistfight. To the ungraspable. Contradictory. Unspeakable”
”This process doesn´t primarily aim for intellectual conclusions or ideological stands. It aims for embodying and embarking. It aims for resisting the repression of compassionate responses which is often required to get by in our daily existence of information flow and of which a large part is constituted by stories of incomprehensible violence. It aims for going to the roots of our perception and processes of witnessing terrible pain and torment,. Pain and torment caused by war started for reasons not necessarily disconnected from the sustenance of our daily habits. To bring those stories to where we cannot habitually protect ourselves from their impact on. It carries the hopes that from this something truthful can take place. And that it bears meaning to do this togheter as a community.”
About silence:
In this process I draw from my experience of formal Zen Buddhism to practice silence together. It entails not speaking with words or with gestures. It entails keeping your gaze low and not meeting each others eyes. This does not mean that we are not attentive to each other or that we are not creating bonds and shared experiences. What it means though is that we give ourselves the opportunity to harbour our responses and cut across our habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, remembering and perceiving.
Alla läsningarna (9 tim)