Dr Dineke Orton

Displaying Self-Narratives in This song is for…

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Survivors of sexual violence frequently experience pressure to remain silent about their trauma due to concerns about being shamed, subjected to scrutiny, or disbelieved.

 

However, both survivors and trauma counsellors emphasise the importance of access to empathetic listeners as a critical component of the coping and recovery process. Opportunities for survivors to articulate and contextualise their experiences through self-narratives can therefore be considered essential to the process of trauma recovery.

 

In this paper I explore the potential of curatorial design to foster a sense of community and safety, encouraging survivors to share and publicly articulate self-narratives that are frequently marginalised or silenced.

 

To this end I examine the traveling exhibition, This song is for… (since 2018) by Gabrielle Goliath, as example. This exhibition is based on the objective of making survivors’ lived experiences visible while avoiding direct representation that might inflict a secondary violence.

 

As an immersive audio-visual installation, the exhibition is premised on a notion of commemorating and honouring survivors, with the curatorial design pivoting around sound and in particular the idea of the dedication of a song.

 

Because she feels violence has a tendency to render victims faceless and anonymous, Goliath’s work is orientated towards specific named individuals and their lived experiences.

 

Importantly, I examine how such a curatorial initiative can shape, collect and present participants’ contributions in ways that allow survivors to be heard and understood, and viewers to witness these important self-narratives.