Stacey Manos – skm9566@nyu.edu
Nadia Hannan – Nh923@nyu.edu
Monika Błaszczak – meb10135@nyu.edu
Danielle Martins de Farias – daniellemartinsdefarias@gmail.com
Mel Adún – pma9372@nyu.edu

às vezes sou o policial que me suspeito
me peço documentos
e mesmo de posse deles
me prendo
e me dou porrada

às vezes sou o porteiro
não me deixando entrar em mim mesmo
a não ser
pela porta de serviço

Cuti, Quebranto

 

For our group final we have chosen to focus on the concepts of invisibility and witnessing as it relates to the ideas of memory, trauma, and performance we have been discussing this semester. Our project will ask classmates, friends, family, community members, and strangers to respond anonymously to prompts that encourage them to reflect on their own interior, invisible thoughts and experiences, as well as how they see themselves reflected in the world around them. Responses will be gathered digitally through online submissions, and in person, through physical drop boxes and assembled in a visual mural in an attempt to  render visible those people, identities, experiences, and thoughts made invisible. As Judith Herman writes in Truth and Repair, there “are enduring public proclamations that tell us whom our society honors and respects. Sometimes directly, more often by omission, they also tell us who is to be dishonored and disrespected, who is to be invisible” (16). What can we learn and what can we do through making visible what society has told us should remain hidden? What possibilities does this act of witnessing open up? As Cathy Caruth advocates that the trauma requires integration, both for the sake of testimony and cure, verbalizing, even in written words, can be a way of breaking a cycle of silence.

As Caruth writes in Explorations in Memory, “If PTSD must be understood as a pathological symptom, then it is not so much a symptom of the unconscious, as it is a symptom of history” (5). In our project, we are interested in investigating the personal experience of (in)visibility as a symptom of history and of patriarchal racial cisheteronormative capitalism. Our ethos will involve interviewing people from various backgrounds and contexts regarding their experiences of (in)visibility. This will allow us to see how personal trauma is always deeply implicated in a larger social, political, and cultural context. Furthermore, our inquiry will allow us to create a thread of connection between seemingly unrelated struggles. By gathering responses physically in New York City and online, reaching out to various communities that we are a part of across the globe, we will be able to form an archive of diverse experiences related to (in)visibility.

In preparation for our project, Monika and Stacey will be preparing the interview questions or guiding prompts. They will also be working on creating a digital google form to post on social media and gather responses from anonymous participants. This form will also be included in the Performance Studies newsletter sent out to our department, for those who wish to answer. Some prompts that we are currently working with are: “Can you recall a time when you watched something unfold and you wished you had acted instead of just watched?” “What do people not want to see?” What do people intentionally or unintentionally always seem to look away from?” “What is made invisible by different cultures, families, and social structures?” What is something you really need to get off your chest?”, and “Tell us something you never told anyone”. These questions have an intentional level of vagueness so that they can share whatever information they feel comfortable doing so. We are very interested in the experience of erasure in certain groups of people, erasure by communities, countries, and societies that often turns into isolation and invisibility. We are interested in how people become invisible, and if there is a possibility for reversal within that system.

Since we are all from different parts of the world, all of us will be posting on our respective social media accounts so we can reach a wider audience and have a great diversity of thought and experience reflected in our findings. Also, we will reach out to NYU’s Instagram account and ask them to post the QR code as well.  Danielle will be taking the lead in organizing and transcribing our responses and creating an archive.  Mel will be responsible for preparing the five boxes that will be placed in strategic locations to be determined by the group to gather the responses.

Nadia will also be helping with the organizing and transcribing process, including collecting and displaying physical and digital responses in a way that highlights the various narratives of (in)visibility. Nadia will also be working on conceptualizing the responses and our process around the figure of the witness/spectator thinking through the act of sharing to an invisible witness (anonymously) and what can be done by displaying and making visible these responses.