ADMA 2023-2024

My research project ‘Space for Reaction’ aims to develop a physical and emotional space for resistance and survival strategies deployed by victimized Partners of a Violent and Abusive Intimate relationship (IPVA). For this purpose, I borrow methodologies of speculative narrative, re-enactments, and instructions. In my work I reflect on the relation between lived experience, agency and empowerment through a feminist phenomenological lens and from the perspective of IPVA peers and my own experience with the subject.

The term ‘space for reaction’, which the research project derives its name from, comes from the diagram ‘Wheel of Power, Control and Space for Reaction’ developed by the research group ‘Coral Project’. The wheel is an iteration of so-called Power and Control diagrams which are used to visually depict the violent and abusive strategies used by the coercive partner. Of these diagrams, the Coral Project in particular sparks my interest, because it adds a slice to the wheel that opens up towards the outside with the words ‘space for reaction’ and ‘help-seeking’. This slice highlights an underexposed aspect of the victimized partner: through different means they look for ways to resist and retaliate against their coercive partner in attempt to maintain their agency within the relationship. This happens in physical or non-physical ways.

In previous research the narrative focuses mostly, intentionally or unintentionally, on the passivity of the victimized partner, the Coral Project offers a new way of looking at the experience of IPVA from the perspective of the victimized partner. As a visual artist-researcher I’m exploring what various shapes resistance can take and how to bring this into a space for everyone who is concerned with the topic of IPVA.

Methodology consists out of interviewing people who have experienced violence and abuse in their previous relationship. Since I have experienced IPVA myself, I feel the importance to develop the project from lived experience. The audio-recorded conversations serve as means to go back in my and the participants’ own history and conjure up memories related to our resistance, retaliation, and healing process. What do we see as acts of resistance when looking back? What do we see as forms of going against someone that we loved but at the same time oppressed us? Do we look differently at ourselves through the lens of resistance? My aim with the interviews is to know more about what a space for reaction could entail on a personal level. This brings me to imagination and re-imagination as a way of thinking about a space for reaction and how resistance is used by victimized partners.

I use re-imagination of memories as a tool to expand on a space for reaction. Acts of resistance are often unnoticeable or tricky to re-tell to outsiders. Through re-imagination, these small acts are enlarged or stretched out, and thus giving them a space for recognition or reaction. Through writing I play with forms of instructions that are acted out in real life by a group of people or play’s out in the reader’s mind as an imagination. Re-imagination is simultaneously a tool in my practice and a form of resistance. These sometimes overlap or intertwine.

Victimized partners sometimes re-imagine a violent or abusive memory in which they react or do something they were not able to do in the real-life situation. But through their imagination they reclaim their agency. This form of resistance feels powerful to me, so I explored it further through the format of a role-playing game (RPG). To this purpose I organize RPG’s workshops where participants can enter an imaginative world with a fictional character and explore different forms of resistance. The workshop floats between the imaginative and the real, hoping to offer a space for thinking and learning about IPVA. The methodology of speculative fabulation offers a new way of looking at resistance and creates a space for reaction.

People in a circle lean forward while speaking into a recorder.

Playing cards are scattered over a surface. In the background, three people are sitting on a green carpet and around a green table.

(video still) A woman moves in the middle of a living room on a low pedestal. Two people swirl in a circle around her pretending to hold a parfum bottle. One of them is sitting on the shoulders of the other. They are both dressed in tones of yellow, orange and gold.

In an almost empty living room, a green carpet and fabric cover the floor and sofa. Three people, in the middle of the space, enthusiastically pound the heels of their shoes in the ground.

(video still) A close-up of a lower body sitting on the floor in a purple/black floral skirt. Both legs laying on one side. From the top of the frame a foot in a black sock and open heel lowers down in the image. The foot freezes in the air. A hand is holding the ankle (for support?).