Anger

In many of our workshops, energies sank down low when we shared the specifics of the medical experiments Sims engaged in. For our Michigan residency, finding ways of rethinking how to share information became an important focus. In the songs Tiye composed and taught to the workshop group, words of the medical archive become sound patterns.

The fistula becomes a soundscape: fishtuhlaha, a-a, breath, rhythm, diaphrams trust forward, shoulders weave back and forth, find space that makes sound possible. Under the breath, making the fistula audible. Blot Blot: scan it.

There is anger in the scan. There is anger in the archive. There is anger and disconnect and disagreement in the archive of our collaboration. We need to honor the ruptures as much as the continuities, our exclusions and insults, our pain at being misunderstood.

------ Petra Kuppers