Concept

Silence is older than the ‘voice’. To make a sound, to utter, you must expend energy. Though silence comes naturally, it is there already, it is in between every voice. It infiltrates into every line easily, and sometimes even captures the lines and takes their place. Therefore, it is hard to defeat ‘the silence’ and make the voice.

 

But what about being silenced?  When being silent is not of choice anymore but more of a state that is imposed by an outer force, the subject is no more silent but is silenced. A silenced subject is not in charge of her own voice; her words are lost, she loses the connection to the ‘self’, feeling repressed, till a point where she can no longer feel anything: ‘numbness’, ‘nothing’…

 

As the creature with the highest adaptability among the species, we humans have evolved to adapt to even the toughest conditions and succeeded in surviving under those circumstances. We can adapt to the heaviest psychological conditions, even the most repressive regimes' most repulsive policies, bravo to us. Our nose adjusts to the long-lasting stinky odors by avoiding them after a certain point. We get used to whispering in silence and seeing in the dark.

We are sure of one thing: We survive, but at what cost?

 

Drawing an analogy between the aftereffects of individual experience of trauma and collective experience of censorship, the project plays around the concepts of self-censorship, aesthetics of censorship, somatic effects of unspoken, unnamed agony, being oppressed and oppressor, being silent and silencing…Through an interactive digital medium, can we discover the ways of connecting through performativity and create a possibility for collective sharing? In a ritualistic manner?

 

After the longtime state of disconnecting where only ‘surviving’ has been enough, can we connect to the ‘self’ and each other’s selves?