And the worst thing is you do it to yourself / Desire notes / Hotel room notes / Lament / People assume I’m an only child / Practical Masochism / Tempest: an epilogue /
And the worst thing is you do it to yourself / moving image / stills and installation view / 9:34 / 2017
because once you open your mouth
once you say it out loud
once you give it a name
it is that thing
and you become that person
that had that thing happen
to them
and then once you are that person
people will always ask you
how you became that person
what happened to make you
this person and when and why
and some people will ask
if you are sure you are that person
some people won’t believe you
at all
and each time someone new
puts their hands on your body
you will have to tell them
what kind of a person you are
and hope they will maybe
be gentle
In And the worst thing is you do it to yourself a monologue fades in an out over footage of repetitive domestic activities. You hear the character doubting, stumbling over their thoughts, remembering, or imagining, they wash the dishes, make a cup of tea. It is slow, something like the feel of a Sunday.
Rejection of a linear narrative allows for the text to alternate between brief lapses into abstraction and a more concrete description of their physicality. Sensations felt in the present moment may appear more stable than memories, or the unsteady gaps around them, so the text clings to the physical.
Using these fragments one begins to connect to a post-assault narrative, piecing together crumbs to try and form proof or at least coherence. And the worst thing is you do it to yourself is about the distrust of memory in relation to certain kinds of subjects in which suspicion is already written into the public discourse surrounding them.
Exhibited at Practical Masochism, Helsinki, Screened at Third Space, Helsinki
Streaming link here