ALMA LILY RAYNER
The writer Audre Lorde encourages us to explore the notion that our silence will never protect us. How to speak, when we can only speak of certain things and when only certain people are deemed trustworthy? How to protect and support each other when institutions lack the proper language to address certain people? When the concrete and the personal is not considered as also political? And so we search. Finding testimonies to our own experience in books can bring a new burden. The realization that one’s experiences are not one’s fault, and that others are in the very same situation can be a liberating realization, one which can foster a sense of belonging and responsibility.
As early as the 1960s, second-wave feminism saw the foundation of so-called Consciousness Raising Groups, which offered women spaces in which to share uncomfortable or traumatic experiences and to offer mutual support. Today, the famous “MeToo” hashtag has become an entire movement, coming to signify a sense of awareness and support among women who will no longer be silenced. To open up and realize that we are not alone, and that our problems are in fact structural, provide the first steps on the journey of activating and changing all of society which remains hostile to women. “Find your own voice and use it, use your own voice and find it,” says poetess Jayne Cortez. To rise up and label things requires courage and patience with oneself, but it also requires support and space. Does art have the potential to offer these tools and these spaces? Can art help us find a path towards community, and to the construction of nurturing relationships? To resist oppression and to work through trauma? I believe that it can. Community debates can become a communal exercise in sound improvisation and is able to bring satisfaction from the simple resonances and harmonies of various shapes and timbers. Taking inspiration from composer Pauline Oliveros, we can attempt at conscious forms of listening and thus restore a basic sense of shared connection and strength.
As bell hooks says, we are not born feminists, but must become them despite the societies in which we live. A toxic individualism and various forms of superiority must never rob us of our new-found family. Unfortunately, it is often education, material conditions and the forms of our bodies which stop us from undertaking the journey towards finding our mutuals and which prevent us from mobilizing various emancipatory and healing tools. They keep us in a vicious circle rather than a circle of protection. We are disenfranchised from writing a shared manual of survival. That is why it is personally important for me to focus on the accessibility of art and musical instruments, of books as well as opportunities to contribute and shape safer spaces.
“I can’t do what I want to do with my own body because I am the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin,” wrote June Jordan in her Poem About My Rights. The fight for equal rights, the fight for finding a supportive community: the fight for life is still on.
(Marie Čtveráčková aka Mary C)
Video is available with English subtitles (CC)
SURVIVAL MANUAL
PUBLIC READING: PERFORMANCE DOCUMENTATION
Survival Manual is a participative platform designed for people with diverse experiences but a shared interest: to be able to find support in difficult life situations and to create autonomous support networks for their communities.
It is a space of encounters between survivors of sexualised violence, psychiatric survivors, Roma women, people with an addiction experience, LGBTQ+ activists and other activists, dealing with various forms of oppression.
Over the course of several months, the group met to discuss the functions and limitations of state institutions in providing emotional and social care. Through the exchange of needs, frustrations and work methods, participants explored alternative models of mutual support, led by experts by experience. One outcome of the meetings was the foundation of a self-help group for survivors of sexualised violence in Ostrava, Czech Republic.
The Public Reading took place in the gallery PLATO Ostrava. Temporarily, a collective library of borrowed books and magazines was made available for visitors. The library was focused on feminism, empowerment and transformation.
In the performance, each participant offers a piece of themselves. Each came to read a text meaningful for their existence. Some wrote their own words and some borrowed from the words of others. All aim to transform silence into collective action.
Participants
Alma Lily Rayner (reading Audre Lorde), Mirka Slívová, Zuzana Fialová, Martin Novák (reading Donnard White), Alex Sihelská, Andrea Tobolová, Radek Šabacký (reading Bell Hooks), Alex Vonsík, Elena Gorolová, Tess (reading Václav Hrabě), Bára Vidomská (reading Anastázie Klemensová), Ladislav Fabian, Magdalena Šipka and Jakub Černý (reading John Donne).
Concept: Alma Lily Rayner, camera: Michal Blecha and Ivan Svoboda, sound: Jakub Černý, translation to Czech: Olga Pek and Martin Novák, translation to English: Františka Schormová and Veronika Pehe, production: Jindřich Chalupecký Society.
BIO
Alma Lily Rayner is a multidisciplinary artist and a feminist activist born in Israel and based in Prague, Czech Republic. Her work revolves around sociopolitical themes linked to gender, trauma and the culturally invisible. While being highly personal, her projects are conducted through long-term research and aim to question dominant discourses of power. In her practice, Rayner combines various digital media, recycled (audio)visual leftovers and pieces of texts. She experiments with different forms of public interventions such as panel discussions and site-specific installations.
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE LIBRARY
Ngozi Adichie, C., 2014. We Should All Be Feminists. Fourth Estate.
Foot, J., 2015.The Man Who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care. Verso.
Saini, A., 2017. Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong-and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story. Beacon Press.
Beard, M., 2018. Women & Power: A Manifesto. Profile Books.
Brown, P., 2013. Don't Be A Dick (Revised Edition).
Moloney, P., 2013. The Therapy Industry: The Irresistible Rise of the Talking Cure, and Why It Doesn't Work. Pluto Press.
Penny, L., 2014. Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Angell, J., 2007. Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life. Nero.
Madam Camilla, 2011. Tajný deník: Otevřená zpověď luxusní prostitutky. XYZ.
Solanas, V., 1967. S.C.U.M. Manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men). Self-published.
Gelderloos, P., 2010. Anarchy Works: Examples of Anarchist Ideas in Practice. Ardent Press.
Magdalena Šipka, M., 2019. Město hráze. Malvern.
Ahmed, S., 2017. Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press.
Lorde, A., 2017. Your Silence Will Not Protect You. Silver Press.
Szasz, T., 2007. Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry. Routledge.
Cvetkovich, A., 2003. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Duke University Press.
Conrad, P., 2007. The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Johns Hopkins University Press.
MORE ON MODELS OF MUTUAL SUPPORT
Sarachild, K., 1973. Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon.
Firth, R. & Andrew Robinson, A., 2016. For a Revival of Feminist Consciousness-Raising.
White, D., 2019. What to do if a friend goes mad. Asylum Magazine.
Hooks, B., 2000. FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYBODY: Passionate Politics. Pluto Press.
Recovery coaching (Czech language only)
Gendertlachy (Storytelling support group based in Ostrava, Czech Republic)
ALMA LILY RAYNER
The writer Audre Lorde encourages us to explore the notion that our silence will never protect us. How to speak, when we can only speak of certain things and when only certain people are deemed trustworthy? How to protect and support each other when institutions lack the proper language to address certain people? When the concrete and the personal is not considered as also political? And so we search. Finding testimonies to our own experience in books can bring a new burden. The realization that one’s experiences are not one’s fault, and that others are in the very same situation can be a liberating realization, one which can foster a sense of belonging and responsibility.
As early as the 1960s, second-wave feminism saw the foundation of so-called Consciousness Raising Groups, which offered women spaces in which to share uncomfortable or traumatic experiences and to offer mutual support. Today, the famous “MeToo” hashtag has become an entire movement, coming to signify a sense of awareness and support among women who will no longer be silenced. To open up and realize that we are not alone, and that our problems are in fact structural, provide the first steps on the journey of activating and changing all of society which remains hostile to women. “Find your own voice and use it, use your own voice and find it,” says poetess Jayne Cortez. To rise up and label things requires courage and patience with oneself, but it also requires support and space. Does art have the potential to offer these tools and these spaces? Can art help us find a path towards community, and to the construction of nurturing relationships? To resist oppression and to work through trauma? I believe that it can. Community debates can become a communal exercise in sound improvisation and is able to bring satisfaction from the simple resonances and harmonies of various shapes and timbers. Taking inspiration from composer Pauline Oliveros, we can attempt at conscious forms of listening and thus restore a basic sense of shared connection and strength.
As bell hooks says, we are not born feminists, but must become them despite the societies in which we live. A toxic individualism and various forms of superiority must never rob us of our new-found family. Unfortunately, it is often education, material conditions and the forms of our bodies which stop us from undertaking the journey towards finding our mutuals and which prevent us from mobilizing various emancipatory and healing tools. They keep us in a vicious circle rather than a circle of protection. We are disenfranchised from writing a shared manual of survival. That is why it is personally important for me to focus on the accessibility of art and musical instruments, of books as well as opportunities to contribute and shape safer spaces.
“I can’t do what I want to do with my own body because I am the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin,” wrote June Jordan in her Poem About My Rights. The fight for equal rights, the fight for finding a supportive community: the fight for life is still on.
(Marie Čtveráčková aka Mary C)
Video is available with English subtitles (CC)
SURVIVAL MANUAL
PUBLIC READING: PERFORMANCE DOCUMENTATION
Survival Manual is a participative platform designed for people with diverse experiences but a shared interest: to be able to find support in difficult life situations and to create autonomous support networks for their communities.
It is a space of encounters between survivors of sexualised violence, psychiatric survivors, Roma women, people with an addiction experience, LGBTQ+ activists and other activists, dealing with various forms of oppression.
Over the course of several months, the group met to discuss the functions and limitations of state institutions in providing emotional and social care. Through the exchange of needs, frustrations and work methods, participants explored alternative models of mutual support, led by experts by experience. One outcome of the meetings was the foundation of a self-help group for survivors of sexualised violence in Ostrava, Czech Republic.
The Public Reading took place in the gallery PLATO Ostrava. Temporarily, a collective library of borrowed books and magazines was made available for visitors. The library was focused on feminism, empowerment and transformation.
In the performance, each participant offers a piece of themselves. Each came to read a text meaningful for their existence. Some wrote their own words and some borrowed from the words of others. All aim to transform silence into collective action.
Participants
Alma Lily Rayner (reading Audre Lorde), Mirka Slívová, Zuzana Fialová, Martin Novák (reading Donnard White), Alex Sihelská, Andrea Tobolová, Radek Šabacký (reading Bell Hooks), Alex Vonsík, Elena Gorolová, Tess (reading Václav Hrabě), Bára Vidomská (reading Anastázie Klemensová), Ladislav Fabian, Magdalena Šipka and Jakub Černý (reading John Donne).
Concept: Alma Lily Rayner, camera: Michal Blecha and Ivan Svoboda, sound: Jakub Černý, translation to Czech: Olga Pek and Martin Novák, translation to English: Františka Schormová and Veronika Pehe, production: Jindřich Chalupecký Society.
BIO
Alma Lily Rayner is a multidisciplinary artist and a feminist activist born in Israel and based in Prague, Czech Republic. Her work revolves around sociopolitical themes linked to gender, trauma and the culturally invisible. While being highly personal, her projects are conducted through long-term research and aim to question dominant discourses of power. In her practice, Rayner combines various digital media, recycled (audio)visual leftovers and pieces of texts. She experiments with different forms of public interventions such as panel discussions and site-specific installations.
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE LIBRARY
Ngozi Adichie, C., 2014. We Should All Be Feminists. Fourth Estate.
Foot, J., 2015.The Man Who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care. Verso.
Saini, A., 2017. Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong-and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story. Beacon Press.
Beard, M., 2018. Women & Power: A Manifesto. Profile Books.
Brown, P., 2013. Don't Be A Dick (Revised Edition).
Moloney, P., 2013. The Therapy Industry: The Irresistible Rise of the Talking Cure, and Why It Doesn't Work. Pluto Press.
Penny, L., 2014. Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Angell, J., 2007. Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life. Nero.
Madam Camilla, 2011. Tajný deník: Otevřená zpověď luxusní prostitutky. XYZ.
Solanas, V., 1967. S.C.U.M. Manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men). Self-published.
Gelderloos, P., 2010. Anarchy Works: Examples of Anarchist Ideas in Practice. Ardent Press.
Magdalena Šipka, M., 2019. Město hráze. Malvern.
Ahmed, S., 2017. Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press.
Lorde, A., 2017. Your Silence Will Not Protect You. Silver Press.
Szasz, T., 2007. Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry. Routledge.
Cvetkovich, A., 2003. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Duke University Press.
Conrad, P., 2007. The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Johns Hopkins University Press.
MORE ON MODELS OF MUTUAL SUPPORT
Sarachild, K., 1973. Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon.
Firth, R. & Andrew Robinson, A., 2016. For a Revival of Feminist Consciousness-Raising.
White, D., 2019. What to do if a friend goes mad. Asylum Magazine.
Hooks, B., 2000. FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYBODY: Passionate Politics. Pluto Press.
Recovery coaching (Czech language only)
Gendertlachy (Storytelling support group based in Ostrava, Czech Republic)
Unseen is an online platform and web archive that presents different approaches to listening and cultivating the relationship between our bodies, space and sound. Through a series of exercises, methods and video guides, we are invited to focus on sound as a tool for relieving feelings of separation and isolation, as a tool for imagining better futures.
Unseen is an online platform and web archive that presents different approaches to listening and cultivating the relationship between our bodies, space and sound. Through a series of exercises, methods and video guides, we are invited to focus on sound as a tool for relieving feelings of separation and isolation, as a tool for imagining better futures.