Flyer, Safety Study #3

Safety Study#3, A Public Act of Healing by Jennifer Nelson, October 27, 2012

Review of Cultural Event/experience written by Rosina Ivanova, December 15, 2012

Photography by Dimitrios Priftis

The Entrance

Safety Study#3 was a two hours performative Public Act of Healing organized by Jennifer Nelson at the Athens Photo Festival 2012 in one of the rooms of an old gas Factory at the center of Athens, Greece. Two speakers were placed at the entrance of the room accompanied by a message for gentle movement, informing the piece involves actual music therapy session.

People would walk in and climb the metal stairs of the old factory to reach to a corner of a second floor terrace where the fluffy chair pads were distributed to the passers by

who would like to join the group by seating on the floor in a circle. They also had to be people who were brave enough to vocalize their experience of violence and aggression in public.

Her piece is a continuation of the artist research on violence and creating safe spaces where they can work on memory and violence one once experienced. Surprisingly enough, the piece was not performed or led by the artist. Neslon was the mind of the piece and a music therapist led the group into 3-staged space.

Seated, ready to find that voice

At first, we all had to experiment with our voices, find the voice within- a vice of an animal that would represent who we are. There were photographs of animals on the walls.

Just before becoming animals

Everyone closed their eyes. The group started moaning, some voices were shy and others were not so sure of themselves; the second stage involved finding a

voice that represented the power animal within. Suddenly, the old factory became a tropical forest of all sorts of sounds and movements produced by the participants: snakes, cats, birds, parrots, pumas, dogs- all at once- like a chorus in a magical forest . Everyone had his/her turn where each one had to demonstrate the sound and combine it with a movement. Everyone became an animal. Scratching the air with cat nails, jumping, showing teeth.

Power movement and power cat screams were echoing the space. Wildness.The third stage of this gathering involved accessing a memory of a violent experience and tapping into it not a person but as being that powerful animal. Once I sat in a center of the group I had to reconstruct my moment. People’s

bodies were bodies representing bits and pieces of my memory. I could barely stay in the center where I had to share. Not with words. I used their bodies to reconstruct the image of my past and reshuffle triangles that made up my image of my memory. Their bodies became the bodies of the people from my past, who were also in a circle around me, sitting next to their cars with lights on, watching a man in the middle hitting me. The people from the room were now different – they were those who supported me. I could not go in detail and share about my experience but I already had crossed the boundaries and had stepped into the middle- I looked around and saw everyone’s eyes, attending scared but compassionate, waiting for me to tell them how I would like to go about this, how do I ‘talk’ about it- willing to share my

past trauma with them, even if it was to talk about without words - by arranging their bodies. I asked them to become the lights of the cars that were circling me I remember from the past and asked them to move their hands up and down -I explained they need to believe they are lights emitting light. This is how far I could share what happened to me.Now the image of the past has been replaced by the new image of those people sharing this with me. The picture of the past became a broken pieces of mirror, replaced with gulls and storks clapping their wings for we belonged to the same flock and we celebrate a ritual of my transition to something new, something better. They shared with me this moment, they supported me.

Emitting light

This piece was done by the people-for the people. The artist herself was a participant in her work. There was no audience. Such a performative gathering turns the function of performance into a communal experience where people share an intimate moment, while tapping into their collective memory and crossing the boundary of the personal to bring it into the public space. Say out loud how they feel- a space where they can be honest and share their biggest fears and nightmarish memories they have been carrying around, but they have to hide in their everyday life. Society seemed a place where healing spaces and such moments get lost into the cultural expectation to go forward and not look back, not to appear vulnerable. We all know this. But do we actually create spaces to heal. Does this mean we open up to truth or we fall into a trap of dependency, becoming slaves of thoughts related to pain and not

its dissolution? Why pain such a bad evil?

How do we share ourselves with others? How do we identify ourselves with pain? How do we learn what is pain, when do ‘have’ to feel it? Why do we feel violated? How do we become animals? How do we listen to others? How do their words resonate within us? How do we answer? Have lost our sensuality to compassion? How do we feel with others? How do we cross the boundary to get access to the origin that makes us frieze? How do we approach our own body to heal a trauma? How do we talk about trauma without crying?

All concluded when everyone grabbed instruments and danced his or her power animal, while making music on peculiar small gadgets that actually all belonged to a baby- baby toys.

More lightSome animals frieze when danger approaches and act dead. Some animals feel danger and attack, others, feel danger and run. After they run they shake. This

was my shaking.

The end

The speakers outside the room were circulating our roars and stories. On my way out of the building I saw

people sitting on the pavement listening to what was going on inside. Probably shaking.

This was a sound piece.