The Unsaid

So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage… Nicole Krauss, 2005

Rooted in community workshops and building relationships with local people

The Unsaid seeks to create space to listen, time to hear

See documentation of the event here

Photo: Damian Rayne, Portobello Rd, London, April 2023

Part 1: a public performance intervention

From different directions on a road, local people slow walk with varying lengths of string linking them mouth to mouth. A meditative work that explores our interdependence and relationships, our invisible ties and bonds, the heard and unheard, emotions unspoken, and the ways we can communicate.

Photos: Mark Albertsen. Portobello Road - April 2023

Participant’s experience of the work:

“..an enlightening experience. .. I am grateful to have been part of this piece”

Love and trust communicated as a continuous loop channeling between us…. Feeling apart from the busy vibrations of people, yet simultaneously completely at one with it all.”

It enabled me to let go of learnt behaviours of verbal communication or lack of it, to determine what happens next.

Part 2: a public listening exercise/event or Part 2: an exercise event in listening

How do we measure what’s been left unsaid between us? (not necessarily the things that hurt or from which we feel pain)

It could be how another has had an impact on our life, a thing we’ve learnt from them. It could also be a regret, a question, a want of forgiveness . .

In a space pairs of participants across ages/backgrounds stand next to a ball of string and a pair of scissors. Pairs consist of diverse relationships: couples, colleagues, siblings, parent & child, strangers, friends...

In round 1 and 2, pairs follow instructions to measure something left unsaid between them or another; to cut a length of string that reflects how little or much needs to be said. At varying distances from each other they stand with their chosen length of string linking them mouth to mouth, opening a conduit for a possible non-verbal reflection on a relationship / exchange.

Can silence give answers? What does it allow us to hear?

Can we hear what we’ve always known?

Has what we’ve always known been said?

In round 3 the audience is invited to participate; to measure what they sense the world could hear right now, but no one, or not enough of us are saying it; to tie one end of string to a weight on the floor and to slowly walk away until its length can best show what has not been said.

And what would we hear if we weren’t busy escaping?

Audience responses:

“... I’m still enjoying all the questions that it inspired me to think about. It was so interesting to watch the different responses.”

“You created something magical where nothing was before.. It had us explore ourselves & our experience widely, deeply, imaginatively.”

“I had to go back home immediately after to write some thoughts. I think I understood where a relationship was going wrong…”

Participant experience:

“The intimacy that was created through having the same piece of string in each other’s mouths & being connected via this very intimate, soft & vulnerable part of our body (the mouth) . . . also having it come in touch with our saliva & therefore the fluids that run through our body & that we need, but that have also been very problematized through the pandemic . . .“

“ I felt I had permission to be seen & heard”