Opera & Sexual Violence
introduction
Secret saint. Unofficial deity
Introduction by Gideon Berger
London artist Steph Singer presents Violet Disruption. A multi-faceted series of artworks and interventions confronting sexual violence in modern times. Violet is an unofficial deity on a mission to liberate the people through the power of rave.
Based on an artistic research project examining
Popular depictions of rape in 19th & 20th century opera,
Maria Goretti, a Catholic saint, murdered then venerated for her resistance to sexual violence,
Stories of contemporary sexual violence and the legal system’s inability to dispense justice or healing
Violet is a mixed reality character, musician and artist born of the combined liberation & rage of survivors of sexual violence. A digital incarnation of resistance to sexual violence. As a powerful warrior for social and political change, Violet harnesses the power of Electronic music to bring empowering catharsis to the group experience.
She is an unofficial deity, championing the healing and recovery of victims of sexual trauma through dance. She is also the personified manifestation of the hero these stories are consistently lacking. Part deity, part agitator, part anarchist and part vigilante, Violet haunts both virtual online spaces, raves and opera houses alike.
She has her debut this November at the Finnish Opera House and will continue to make a number of independent experiences across 2023 alongside Gideon Berger. We are looking for a studio to bring this vision to life with us.
Violet was first commissioned by the Royal Opera House and Sirt Centre, and the character was birthed with Freyja Sewell, Amanda Mayo, David Andrew Reid and Gideon Berger whose creative DNA is intrinsically connected to the character.
Research
This collection of writing serves to place Violet Disruption within a current social context. I touch on key areas of interest to me including rape & opera, deities, masks and healing through raving. This is not the ‘seminal source’ of all there is to know about any of these topics (OBVIOUSLY) but instead a collection of writing that is foundational to VD’s evolution.
It is interesting to observe in this time how binary the conversation around rape is in literature, art and psychology - continuing to speak most readily about the male to female rape stories and rarely acknolwedging the existence of rape within female to male or within non-binary, gender fluid and non-conforming communities.
This is dissected within in Mithu Sayal’s literature, and we can consider how keeping rape a ‘binary’ topic keeps it unspoken - as the word quickly brings up topics that challenge the patriarchy including but not limited to rape as warfare, sexual oppression, gender based violence, rape as expression of power and the tragic relationship between the likelihood of experiencing rape and your economic wealth, race, gender or sexual identity.
The silence around rape is not soley explained by ‘victims are ashamed’, but also because the conversation of rape is a gateway to a series of raging sub-conversations about other social factors we prefer to avoid.
Violet exists to liberate the people through the power of electronic music. She is a survivor of sexual violence. Her live experiences are a liberating deep dive into these complex topics, as powered by the mantra ‘Fuck it and dance’.
Violet as Diva
diva (n.)
"distinguished woman singer, prima donna," 1864, from Italian diva "goddess, fine lady," from Latin diva "goddess," fem. of divus "a god, divine (one)," related to deus "god, deity" (from PIE root *dyeu- "to shine," in derivatives "sky, heaven, god").
Opera (“work in music”) is an artform driven by the seductive craft of music. In cannonised operas music often lulls audiences into a unique spellbound state where they can enjoy the most dastardly sides of human life - murder, rape, funerals, seiges, sex work, miscarriages, suicide, affairs, mistaken identity, unrequetied love. The whole soap opera package as told by a 100 piece-orchestra, lavish sets and a bevvy of singers with hefty vibratos and the scope of projection to make our ribcages shake. Extreme life events buried in fabulousness.
And at the centre of it all - the diva. Brilliant, operatic titans with famously tempestuous and untameable spirits play these female leads. So what roles can they anticipate?
Female characters holding the stories of rape, female suicide and sex work, supported by operatic plots that in the most simplistic sense communicate:
rape = bad
victims = sad/mad
Clearly rape is not alone in being a traumatic life event which makes a frequent appearance in an Operatic plot. But, it is interesting how the Operatic world deals with this theme and how this speaks to the psychology of the times when these works were written, perspectives of the storytellers, audiences of opera and how this all contextualises Violet as a futuristic fucking diva.
Women in opera expire
American novelist, arist and English profesor Rebecca Brown writes “Both Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia and Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto tell stories in which women without power are raped by boozy and powerful men (a king, a duke), then feel ashamed and kill themselves (the women, not the men; the men get away with it).”
When I was at school, my brilliant music teacher Mr Willis half-joked about the fate of female characters in opera, saying when the author was done with them, they would either kill them off with a high-pitched hysterical episode or kill them in a convenient and silent off stage death - either way suddenly, without warning these women expire.
As methodically broken down in psychoanalysist’s Ellen Toronto work ‘Women’s voices in opera’ - she supports Mr Willis’ claim and goes further to state “Women in opera are sexual pawns—given and taken at the whim of men.” with a focus on Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, Verdi's Rigoletto, and Bizet's Carmen she looks at how opera narratives simultaneously oppress women whilst contrasting or keeping the audience entertained with the power of their timelessly expansive beautiful music.
As Clement describes: ‘The prima donna is the prisoner of a machinery, and booby-trapped by a machination. She is a living doll to be carried off and taken around for one’s personal pleasure. She takes the place of a child’s object…that will never get away (p.27).’
Rape is unfortunately predominantly experienced by women, in an artform dominated by white male authors why is rape of such interest to Opera? And what stories are these authors really telling?
Is rape narrative tool? A simple short-cut to generating high emotions in audiences?
Is the frequency of rape’s mention in Opera a radical demonstration of the frequency of women being raped and these writers experience of that fact?
Is it a fetishistic perspective, aiming to tuck into the salacious sides of rape and sexual violence to appeal to the ‘she wanted it really’ narrative?
Is the music so stunningly beautiful that none of thiis matters as they are trying to empathise?
Rape as narrative tool
Emily Toronto speaks of 19th century opera attempting to return audiences to the “good old days” in which women are routinely victimized, their only option being the exquisite music in which they cry out for redemption. What are their options we may ask? She states how the prima donna’s of opera face certain madness, death, suicide - and she centres a stand out quote from seminal author on the topic Catherine Cléments.
Clement (1988) speaks to this by centring Carmen
‘this woman who makes decisions all alone, while all around her the men keep busy with their little schemes as brigands and soldiers. She is the very pure, very free, Carmen. My best friend, my favorite (p. 48).’
Why would Clement love Carmen so much? Well perhaps it’s obvious, but she is in control of her sexuality. Something that in many instances pre-1970s psychology would have us believe that the more self possessed sexually that a woman is the more she is a ‘degenerate’ and is deserving of her comeupance, the more innocent a women is the more she is desirable, attractive. (Psychopathology, Freud)
We can continue to place these operas within the cultural legal context of the UK and europe to see that rape carried the death penalty until 1841 in th UK, and 1970s in the US.
“But this happened only if the woman owned an honor that could have be stolen from her, as apposed to a slut who had lost it on her own accord or any of the various classes of women-black, colonized, prostitutes, the poor - who were not considered to have any honour in the first place.” Mithu Sayal
M Sayal also reminds us that in the 18th & 19th century an unmarried woman who reported a rape was subjected to the ‘two finger test’ to find out, based on the elasticity of her vagina whether she could endure sexual intercorse.
But the music is so beautiful…
Foster’s argument in The Paris Review persuasively encourages us to listen to writers like Carolyn Abbate and Paul Robinson and start to view opera as a form dominated by the female voices who express the rich, and true pain of being alive. And suggests in fact, that we can reverse this knee-jerk sexist critique of opera and see that prima donna’s the divas hold some of the greatest arias of pain, lament, suffering, love and oppression within the operatic canon.
Within this lens, we can allow ourselves to look beyond often fetishistic gaze Catherine Clements so fiercely examines within Operatic libretto, and explore beyond the words and into what the music is telling us these women feel:
“it can also be read as an aural revolt against men. The female voice can breach, overcome, and triumph over male voices, and over the orchestra, the libretto, the plot—over everything. The music itself sides with women, with their voices, and encourages their passion even in the face of difficulty and defeat.” Foster - The Paris Review.
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/12/05/opera-post-weinstein-world/
How do we decipher the line between empathetic operatic storytelling and the fetishistic overdramatic gaze?
What’s sexist music?
Which women in the operatic world exude strength and fullness of character?
And how do we unpick the social commentary and the patriarchal history of opera and the cultural climate of the time of these writers from the work? And … why should we?
If we are to follow Clement’s feminist, though not an Opera expert, and her message - we can quickly refute this argument that - The music is beautiful so therefore it’s ok, with the simple core truth that in opera, women’s creative voices have been largely silent, and therefore men can play out their fantaisies of the subimssive sexualized female victim in the guise of high art. Opera’s female characters, she argues, are characters for our sexual pleasure, and we get the most enjoyment of all when they suffer and die. The music is simply a tool that lulls the audiences into ‘not seeing’.
Not only, Sam Abel aruges, do the narratives and depictions of operatic heroines live the theme of assault from the stage into the relationship between writer and character - but Sam continues further in Opera In The Flesh: Sexuality In Operatic Performance, to say, Opera is the dominant and the audience the submissive.
Do audiences willfully submit to the domination of Opera?
Do we allow the music, the stories to dominate our attention and sexual focus?
Does the 100 piece orchestra, 100 cast strong aesthetic feast serve to turn us on with all the drama?
Is this true of all engagement with all art?
Can these power dynamics be reversed, reworked or reimagined?
Characters that experience rape / sexual assault
It is worth noting that based on Victorian rules of stage, operatic narratives have sexual violence attempts off stage or as mentions, either that or thwarted in the final moments. But nevertheless an extra-ordinary percentages of operas in the 19/20 century centre rape and subsequent maddness/suicde as the only way to resolve that woman’s narrative.
A list of operatic heroines who experience rape:
Work in progress:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HORwukoyftNf1Gu2EC20D5Gdw6jwbQO0CfutiDL2eD0/edit#gid=0
Some highlights
Lucretia (by Britten) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-Ieh2Rmq1g
Lucia de Lammemoor (Lucia de Lammemoor, by Donizetti) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92jiitUEahg
Lulu (by Alban Berg)
Carmen (by Puccinni)
Madame Butterfly (by Puccinni) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLcbfF9ypmM
Zerlina (Act 1, Don Giovanni)
Gilda (Act 2, Rigoletto)
Lady of mstenk
Rape in the global current context
‘The victim herself unconsciously also may tempt her offender. The conscious or unconscious biological and psychological attraction between man and woman does not exist only on the part of the offender toward the woman but also on her part toward him, which in many instances may to some extent be the impetus for his sexual attack. Often a woman unconsciously wished to be taken by force.’
David Abrahamsen - The Psychology of Crime
As Mithu Sanyal unpicks in her book ‘Rape from lucretia to #Metoo’ - in the global/social context of rape, we understand rape as a crime in it’s own category of tortue, which (until recently) has been defined in many countries as simply ‘forced penetration by a penis’. And the physchology and Freud relayed to his followers that women secretly longed to be dominated, it was a secret desire infact and therefore rape was often refferred to as an act of sex and uncontrolloable male passion.
She interrogates and presents the facts that 150 percent of violent crimes happen to men, and that these statistics increase with men of colour and trans people increasing to at least 3 times more likely than their white counterparts.
Add to this that 90 percent of violent crimes are committed by men, she encourages us to see “The way we think about rape is intricately and disturbingly related to the way we think about sex - and that encompasses the meaning of sexuality and of gender, in equal measure.”
We could begin to interpret the frequency of rape in opera naratives through the historical gender dynamics between the male Operatic writer to female characters. Can we see Opera narratives as an incidiental result of these writers attempting to connect with the female audience through the most horrific, traumatic and violent access point of our female collective imagination - rape & sexual violence. Or perhaps, even more interestingly connect to the male psyche with a horrific, and violent fear of committing sexual violence.
Opera is Dead - so why does this matter?
“Nearly all the great operas are crammed with gore, crudity and all the things from which right-thinking parents seek to shield their precious progeny. And the main characters, especially the female ones, make appalling role models.”
Opera’s awful role models and the #MeToo moment (The economist article by R.G)
Ok so… not that many people see operas anymore - and as a result opera is an artform that has been declared dead numerous times in the last decade by mainstream media including The Huffington Post, Washington Post, Guardian, Vice and countless more, but In reading Beyond the Trigger Warning: Teaching Operas that Depict Sexual Violence by Kassandra L. Hartford she opens our eyes as to the power of operatic craft to communicate stories and ideas.
And, even a quick google will illustrate that though the material & form feels outdated and irrelevant, directors are still tackling opera and looking to find new ways to tell these stories, and new ways to embrace modern sensibility and desensitization to extreme gore that contrasts the victorian censorship - eyes here particularly on Calixto Bieito and Damiano Michieletto.
In this article, Kassandra describes seeing the 2014 production of ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’ at the Met squeezed in between a group of college kids on a school trip. She tells how the rape of Katerina at the end Act 1 is staged with a projected deep red rose rising over the pair. Curious to see what has been interpreted she turns to the students in the interval and a student remarks “Well,” she said, “it seemed like Katerina wanted it, so it didn’t really bother me.”
She continues to deepen the message of this moment, reminding us that Opera (and I think most would argue all arts) “can shape the way students think about, respond to, and feel about contemporary issues. The reactions that I saw demonstrated that, for at least some audience members, the Met’s production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk perpetuated rape culture.”
In a brilliant workshop series I participated in with Katie Mitchell she opened my eyes to the potential of Opera as an artist by reminding me who it is we are talking to. These canonic pieces and lavish spaces are the mecca for wealthy people - so is it the case that in Opera we have captive audiences of the 1%? If so, as artists, is this not the perfect space to present bold and politically disruptive ideas to some of the most powerful agents on world stages?
So in the future of presentations of rape and sexual violence on Operatic stages - how do we discuss these issues without lecturing an audience? Or burning all the material audiences love so much?
Do we collaborate with directors to decipher intelligently between depicting rape/sexual violence to avoid the historical hangovers of ‘crime of passion’, ‘deflowering of the innocent’?
How can we unpick the intrenched psychoanalytical freudian desire complex as not simply ‘knowledge’ but fact?
How can our diva embody truth of recovery of rape, realities of rape and sexual violence, posess sexuality and power, and proudly carry with her all the previous historical divas who have been raped within the context of Opera?
Violet as a secret saint, unofficial deity
Saints, deities, daemons, superheroes all possess something mystical - an embodiment of something beyond human. This could be something to keep you going, something to channel your prayers towards, something that conjures or reminds us that dark and light parts of us exist or be a communal embodiment of an ineffable feeling… or anything in between.
I notice I am more easily relaying information on western deities and I think this is consciously to relate more in locality to my British born & raised background. It is interesting to consider how naturally the creation of Violet has connected to anecdotal philosophies that I have found from other non-western deities and their relationship to the way any single human responds to the ideas of icons, deities, figureheads - and how religions offer us examples of philosophies that are critical to groups of people. I touch on a few of my discoveries of these elements below.
What is it to create a saint / deity divorced from a religion?
How does this feel to religious minds?
Philosophies of deities and saintliness vary hugely across cultures and religions (Fravashi, rsi, guru, sant, arahant, bodhisattva, Shengren, kami). We might consider them transcendent beings like God, an icon with a special significance or something to evoke a special feeling. We may believe in one deity or in many deities. We may understand a deity as a soul with the supreme principaltiy that each living creature thing possess a deity or an aspirational quality.
Who do secular groups look to for characters and ideas that embody qualities we wish to believe in, or aspire towards?
Superheros? Well, superheroes certainly give us something to believe in, they help us explore qualities within ourselves that are beyond the scope of the normal human body and able to withstand huge exertion, trauma or fight, as a result they may plug gaps in our psychology to support us to imagine more for us and our situation.
Violet is connected to all of this, though she is neither transcendent, a miracle worker nor a super human - instead she is a mascot, a believer and a fighter for audiences to connect with. She is here to celebrate the complex and messier sides of recovery after rape, not through tears but through the act of sexual, physical and collective liberation - raving.
Perhaps her most deitfied quality is that she is a composite individual holding many stories and is open to many wearers. She has not been cannonised by the church (obviously…) but will be by the people across workshops and facilitated sessions in 2022 - we aim 300 survivors across the next two years.
Though she is historically connected to rape & sexual violence she stands for survival and speaks to the parts of the general human psyche which has survived something life changing.
Maria Goretti
A Catholic saint, murdered then venerated for her resistance to sexual violence
Born
October 16, 1890 Corinaldo, Province of Ancona, Marche, Kingdom of Italy
Died & Feast day
July 6, 1902 (aged 11) Nettuno, Province of Rome, Lazio, Kingdom of Italy
Venerated in
Catholic Church
Beatified
April 27, 1947, Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican City by Pope Pius XII
Canonised
June 24, 1950
St. Maria Goretti, was an 11-year-old Italian girl stabbed to death while resisting a sexual assault in 1902. She was venerated on the accounts that In 1906 she returned to her killer, who was in prison at the time, as an apparation. This encounter involved her forgiving the man and inspired his subsequent conversion to Catholoism.
Maria Goretti was born in 1890 in Corinaldo, Italy. Her father was a farmworker who died of malaria, leaving Maria’s mother alone. Maria’s mother, brothers and sisters worked in the fields while she cooked and kept the house clean and babysat her younger sister Teresa.
On July 5, 1902, Maria was sewing her 18 year old brother / neighbour (it is unclear which) shirt - Alessandro’s shirt. He attempted to rape her on the steps and the story tells us that Maria cried that this was a mortal sin and that he would go to hell. Alessandro began to choke her until Maria said she would rather die than submit. Alesssandro pulled out a knofe and stabbed her 11 times.
Alessandro was sentenced to 30 years and admitted that he had attempted to persuade her to accompany him to bed on several occasions prior. He allegedly remained unrepentant until Maria appeared to him in a dream and gave him lilies, which immediately burned in his hands. And then reportedly forgave his actions.
When he was released 27-years-later, he went directly to Maria's mother and begged her forgiveness, which she gave, saying, "If my daughter can forgive him, who am I to withhold forgiveness?"
Maria Goretti was beatified by Popo Pius XII at St Peter’s Basilca, April 27, 1947. And then on June 24, 1950, Maria was declared a saint and Alessandro was present in the St. Peter's crowd to celebrate her canonization. He later became a laybrother of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, where he lived in a monastery and worked as its receptionist and gardener until his death.
See the appendix#1 for notes on Catholoic cannonisation.
Why does a miracle have to be any more than the act of survival?
What happens if we do not live but did survive trauma?
Also see St Agnes of Rome who was patron saint of rape and who’s miracles included growing hair across her entire body so that she could not be touched.
Violet as avatar
“Generally speaking, an avatar is the embodiment of a person or idea. However, in the computer world, an avatar specifically refers to a character that represents an online user. Avatars are commonly used in multiplayer gaming, online communities, and web forums. ... These characters serve as the players' avatars.”
https://techterms.com/definition/avatar
avatar, Sanskrit avatāra (“descent”), in Hinduism, the incarnation of a deity in human or animal form to counteract some particular evil in the world.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/avatar-Hinduism
Avatar in Sanskrit means appearance, manifestation, descent, materialization, or outgrowth. An associated word is avataranam, which means descent or descending into water for bathing, coming down, crossing, translation or metamorphosis. It is also a reference to a holy place, or a place where God or an aspect of him is manifested. A short prayer or invocation which is addressed to God or a deity and which causes him to descend upon earth is known as avataranika. The introduction, preface of a text or a book is avatarani. Figuratively speaking, avatar means a shooting star or the descent of a star (ava + tara) into the earth atmosphere.
Violet as a full body mask
Violet is a mask, a protector, a liberator and an invitation to embrace the sexual, rageful, liberated parts of the self.
There are many theories around mask wearing but we can see from Mary Anne Mitchells exploration of mask wearing that masks were not originally used as a means of personification, but for the exaltation of the individual and to reveal the power of the god captured in its very essence.
“An analogous sense of mystery is the prime emotion of the animal mask, where the individual or group wearing the mask assumes certain qualities of the beast itself, qualities also inherent in man but suppressed under normal social conditions.”
Of course as westerner, it is tricky not to project a post-freud & Jungian psychological analysis of mask wearing but we can at a very basic level say that masks meant the wearer was able to communicate as ‘comedy’, ‘tragedy’ or even as one of the Gods.
When we trace mask wearing through-out the 19th Century leading theatre practitioner, Artaud’s perspective is that masking is an act of transformation and this is centred in the enhancing his core perspective of theatre that “The theatre must compel men to see themselves as they truly are, without the mask of lies and hypocrisy that obscures the clarity of the senses. Like the plague cruelty finally achieves a release, an act of sincerity in which man un- veils his true self, free from custom and accepted behavior.”
Grotowski was focused on finding and connecting with the contemporary spiritual truths of a universal nature. He saw acting, when mastered, as a process of self-discovery and demasking of the life mask we wear in service to put on a new mask in performance.
“This defiance of taboo, this transgression, provides the shock which rips off the mask, enabling us to give ourselves nakedly to something which is impossible to define but which contains Eros and Caritas [charity].”
Violet as a rave facilitator
Electronic music and dancing as a form of collective healing
“At raves, young men and women dance to electronic music from dusk to dawn. Previous scholarship treats the rave as a hypertext of pleasure and disappearance. However such a postmodern view does not attend to the poignant and meaningful spiritual experiences reported by those who go to raves.” Scott R Hutson, ‘The Rave: Spiritual healing in modern wester subcultures’
Sometimes there is nothing left to do but move. Raving is healing, it is also a centre for queer and altnerative communities to come together and allow our bodies to be free and form a collective with one another to move, dance, feel the music and do it all together. This is important to consider the sacred truth of that nature of the space, this can be a unique space free of judgement and an encouragement to shake off the oppression of social norms and just fucking dance and explore ourselves freely.
This can be no accident that people use EDM, Techno, Trance music, endless movement and occasionally drugs as the access point to healing. We can see this in EDM promoters general ideology, as referenced by nowaday’s (A brooklyn based alternative location). Nocturnal Medicine is one of the club promoters and featured in the NY times article sharing how raving is a healing act. At a basic level dancing and moving is an endorphin release, closeness and oxytocin release, synchronised movement with others a collective act.
Dance Movement psychotherapist Mary Starks Whitehouse focuses on authentic movement as a form of therapy, saying “It opens up their individual sense of themselves and teaches them that they are humanly valuable to each other. It is the discovery of the growth process that is themselves becoming. The word 'becoming' moves, it is the movement aspect of eternity. Being is the essence; becoming is the movement of the essence. After all it is Life that dances”.
Dancing, moving is a non-academic act, it invites you to be intuitive, connected and centred in your body, and facilitating this motion is the DJ, the artist. There are of course different ideologies but, Violet will follow the lineage of electronic music artists as a facilitator of audiences collective experience rather than the thing to watch. Through her music and experiences she centres the audience experience and spends time unlocking and opening parts of the audience up to be ready to dance and rage it out.
We can see from the practice of dance movement psychotherapy with particular reference to the chapter ‘In the Beginning’ from ‘The Theory of and practice of group psychotherapy’ by irvin yalom that the act of a collective movement process will go on a long and rocky journey where the group is essentially individuals forming bonds with one another that bring up historical and unhelpful feelings, but as individuals begin to form relationships this group of individuals become a collective, at this stage the collective will often revolt against the therapist/leader until they emerge as a cohesive community - essentially knowing that the group can survive challenge, obstacles and risk. One important fact, unsurprisingly, is the conscious will to respect one another’s boundaries, observing the rules of the space, having the freedom to express emotions and the performance of opening and closing rituals. All of these elements form an element of safety and conscious ‘entering’ and ‘exiting’ of the space and therefore solidify the idea that ‘we are a group’.
Interesting for us to consider as critical elements in creating the Violet experiences now and in the future. What is the ritual we can use to bookend her experiences?
Violet as healer
‘The system isn’t broken’ - It cannot be fixed
Mariame Kaba, We do this till we free us
Violet is driven by healing. As connected to some of the seminal cultural and prison abolitionist theorists, Violet is a force that speaks for a type of healing and liberation that is non exclusive. Instead, inclusive of all.
Every single person deserves healing, liberation and respect, and this is intrinsically connected to the process of justice. As intensely explored in ‘The Feminist and the sex offender’
“Sex offenders are not second class citizens. The constitution protects their liberty and dignity just as it protects everyone else's.” (State violence - the feminist and the sex offender P. 50)
It is a challenging statement, of course, but we can see this perspective as a hopeful one by following Mariame Kaba’s advice “Let’s begin our abolitionist journey not with the question ‘what do we have now, and how can we make it better?’ instead let’s ask, ‘what can we imagine for ourselves and the world?’ Mariame Kaba (so you’re thinking of becoming an abolitionist’)
Violet is connected to these ideas and devoted towards inspiring the collective imagination to deeply think through and connect with Mariame Kaba, Ruth Gilmore, Judith Butler, Erica Meiners, Audre Lorde and more, all who have created us robust academic literature to challenge our learned western perspective that punishment is the only form of accountability.
How can Violet embody the words of these incredible thinkers and create space for alternative viewpoints, justice and inclusive thinking?
How can she gently ask us…
‘What is it to treat all humans like people not criminals? How can restorative justice change our perspective of humanity, the world?’ (Feminist and the sex offender)
How can we stretch our definition of survivor, how can we learn to remember life is not as simple as good and bad, how can we extend ideas of love beyond what feels natural?
We can read the work of Audre Lorde and Bell Hooks who command us to love freely so many times, hooks allows us to see “It is essential ...that we speak of love. For love is the necessary foundation enabling us to survive the wars, the hardships, the sickness and the dying with our spirits intact. It is love that allows us to survive whole.”
Survival as an insight
When we speak about sexual violence that has happened to us, we risk irrevocably changing the way our loved ones, wider worlds, legal systems and police percieve us. In the eyes of others we may then become victims, liars, loose, weak or something else. And of course in some people's eyes, we may become strong, emotionally resilient or something else.
But nevertheless it is possible and feared that when speaking out, the survivor will become criminalised, cross examined or demonised by other people. This is acutely felt if we are to pursue formal justice. Knowing that still, police will refer to rape cases as he said she said cases - the emphasis in the Uk on proving the rape happens often hinges on the believability and credibility of the accuser.
Stepping into this justice process can be alarming for the accuser as we step in knowing that it is our own lives, sex lives, jobs, health, education, race, class and precious history that are the greatest inspiration for any defence case.
Not only this, but it is proven that we are making false accusations we can be charged with “perverting the course of justice and wasting police time” resulting in life sentences
To pursue justice, it often assumed the survivor may be motivated by revenge, as if revenge hibes closure or healing. Our punitive system presents the perfect answer for this - the potential of prison. A space to subject those who did harm to harm themselves.
Not only do we see that harm doers are often the survivors of sexual violence, or marginalised by ther social, cultural status. We also see that sadly, the harm that these perpetrators commit outside of prison makes them more likely to experience sexual violence within prison themsevles. Creating a deeply dark cycle of harm.
From the UK our statistics show that 20% of the prisoners who experienced sexual violence in prison were themselves convicted of a sexual offence. And it is extremely unlikely that these statistics meaningfully represent the reality of being within the prison system since the likelihood of reporting sexual violence when you are alreayd within the prison system decreases.
“Perpetrators of rape or assaults involving genital or groin contact were most likely serving sentences for sexualoffences, while perpetrators of assaults involving non-penile penetration were more likely to be serving sentencesfor violent or acquisitive offences.” MOJ Sexual Assaults Reported in Prisons: Exploratory Findings from Analysis of Incident Descriptions, 2018
As humans it is most often our intention to survive, or at least try to for as long as we can. How can we open our minds to new ways of perceiving survival and support our imaginations to go beyond a punitive system? How can we attempt to heal and acknowledge what we survived, and develop strategies for meaningful accountability? How can we begin to connect the thoughts that punishing those who do harm is not solving the issue of the harm done to any party?
“What the movements I see myself as part of aim to do is build rigorous and real pathways for people to be accountable and to transform and yes also to heal. Yet to end violence we must build collective movements, not just practices and systems that operate at the individual level..” P. 17, Erica R Meiners unpicks in the Feminist and the Sex Offender
Bringing together the threads
Violet is here to create experiences that facilitate collective, electronic music based release. She is a survivor of sexual violence, and stands witiin Opera houses as a conscious political act - she is a reminder, a phantom, a call to a future which re-thinks the raped victims journey as a one way ticket to suicide, madness or a never ending incompleteness.
But, as is clear, the Opera House is not ‘her space’ she is a visitor, an educator inside this space. Violet’s space is one where people can move their bodies freely, and not be constrained by the seats or the conventions of a musical form. Violet’s space is any space where the music can flood every empty crevice of the space and push up against the bodies of every audience member and surround them in the invitation to move, to dance and to do it together as a collective.
Violet uses electronic music as a genre, centred in healing, to open audiences minds to the possibility that survival is life, it is beautiful, and it is messy. These experiences are centred in my lived experiences of rape and sexual violnece of course, but ultimately we create this skin as a collective to be an invitation to survivor/artists of the future and survivors generally to use her as a mask, to connect with the most liberated, rageful and sexual sides of themselves as a way to progress through some periods of recovery of rape and be reminded they are not alone.
And, like all figures, she is not reserved simply for those that have experienced sexual violence - she is a figure to connect with irregardless of your sexual experiences, a reminder that survival is our lifes journey.
And though we must survive individually, survival is a collective act and one that when done together builds community, cohesiveness and collective power.
Appendix
Appendix #1
Canonisation
By granting sainthood, the Roman Catholic Church recognises that the saint is in heaven. After the canonisation, worshipers may pray to this saint. Nearly 3,000 people have been canonised by the Roman Catholic Church since the practice began in 1234.
Who can become a saint?
Anyone can become a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, but this status is only granted after death. Furthermore, to achieve this beatified status, one must lead a heroically virtuous life, in the strictest accord with the teachings of the church, embracing theological virtues charity, faith, hope and Cardinal virtues - Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Courage.
One must also perform miracle (healings, liquefaction, incorruptobility, odor of sanctity, levitation, bi-location) during their life and either be martyred in the name of their religion, or be responsible for miracles posthumously.
The process of canonisation:
Servant of God
A formal request for an individual to be considered for sainthood is submitted to a special Vatican tribunal.Heroically virtuous
Theologians, cardinals, archbishops and bishops, studies the person’s life and writings to ensure they are in line with the teachings of the church.
The candidate must be found to possess four cardinal virtues and three theological virtues to be declared venerable and of heroic virtue.
Beatification and Miracles
If the person was martyred - suffered death or persecution in the name of their faith - he or she may be beatified and named Blessed without further investigation.
If not martyred, the person must be responsible for the occurrence of a posthumous miracle verified by the congregation.
Appendix #2
Definitions
‘Saint’ (Catholic)
Paragon, holy person, martyr, canonise, angel, holy, apotheosis, unworldly person, wonderworker.
Tsaddiq (Jewish)
The Hasidic tsaddiq (righteous one), also called rebbe (teacher) or admor (acronym for "master, teacher, and guide"), is the spiritual leader of a Jewish community, to whom members look for guidance in both spiritual and mundane matters
Sufi Saint’s (Arabic, islamic)
fravashi (Zoroastrian)
“one who has been selected (for exaltation)”
fravashi, in Zoroastrianism, the preexisting external higher soul or essence of a person (according to some sources, also of gods and angels). Associated with Ahura Mazdā, the supreme divinity, since the first creation, they participate in his nature of pure light and inexhaustible bounty.
(Zoroastrianism or Mazdayasna is one of the world's oldest continuously-practiced religions, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster (also known as Zaraθuštra in Avestan or as Zartosht in Modern Persian).[1][2] It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil and an eschatology which predicts the ultimate conquest of evil by good.[3] )
rsi or guru (Hindu)
Ṛṣi literally means ‘a man of wisdom.
The word is derived from the verbal root ṛṣ which means ‘to know’. The word ṛṣi means any person who has attained expertise and proficiency in any field of knowledge. Hence, a ṛṣi need not be a person of religious, philosophical or spiritual bent of mind. In this sense, an expert in any field of knowledge like Caraka, Suśruta or Bhāskarācārya, can be called a ṛṣi.
guru, (Sanskrit: “venerable”) in Hinduism, a personal spiritual teacher or guide.
sant
A sant (Sanskrit: सन्त्; IAST: Sant; [sɐn̪t̪]) is a human being revered as a "truth-exemplar" for their knowledge of "self, truth, [and] reality" in Indic religions, particularly Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism.[1][2] In Sikhism it is used to describe a being who has attained spiritual enlightenment and divine knowledge and power through union with God
arahant or bodhisattva (Buddhist)
The term arhat (Sanskrit) or arahant (Pali) denotes for Buddhism a being who has reached a state of perfection and enlightenment. The term has been thought to derive from pre-Buddhist contexts in India, where it signified a “worthy” being.
Shengren (Daoist)
“Sage” is an extremely important concept in Chinese philosophy; discussions in Confucianism, Daoism and Mohism have all revolved around this term. The ancient texts have explained “sage” as rui (睿) which means sagacious, sapient, percipient and farsighted and as tong (通) which means unimpeded access, passing through and going all the way (to the desired destination).
In all, the term “sage” can be explained as “reaching in an unimpeded manner; percipient and wise” (通达睿智). The person that the sage refers to is someone who is above the common herd, of surpassing wisdom, and possessed of an ability to act in an unimpeded, far-reaching manner.
Kami (Shinto)
a divine being in the Shinto religion.
Rape is inevitable
See Rape from lucreita to #metoo by Mithu Sanyal
A Natural History of Rape Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion By Craig T. Palmer and Randy Thornhill
This book should be a must read for any women's rights activist or similar social justice warrior.
What is “rape culture”? Bonnie Gordon describes it as an ideology that “normalizes rape as part of a larger system of attitudes and understandings of gender and sexuality.”4
Heidi Waleson, well regarded Opera Critic for the Wall St Journal tackles
Credits
https://www.uwb.edu/ias/faculty-and-staff/rebecca-brown
https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/rape-as-metaphor/Content?oid=18680094