Othering
(the humane movement)
sound recording & design,
participatory design, creating narrative
In this work we use the metaphor of an autoimmune system: a living body that mistakenly attacks itself. The autohumane disease that is othering, where humanity is attacking itself.
//I am something to be placed,
named, kept apart.//
We fight dehumanizing ideologies, divided societies, othering, censorship, self-censorship and restrictions of identities. We want to build a community where everyone feels welcomed and accepted. Our focus is on solidarity, connection, love, compassion and above all empathy to create new hope in people. We want to integrate and connect people, especially those who feel alienated. We want to create spaces and small moments of connection on a smaller and bigger scale, hoping this will have a chain reaction on how people view and treat each other. With our end goal of creating more empathy in the digital age.
After exiting the cortex, the audience was invited to take a zine.
Listen & read the stories of the installation:
//
What makes a human, HUMAN?
Is it the biological body?
Is it belonging, being recognized or spoken to?
Is it fitting into shared rules and nspoken norms?
Is it our ability to form structures?
Or our capacity to decide who belongs inside them?
Or is it the social power to decide who is included,
and who is kept outside the frame?
This work is about othering.
About how humans are shaped, pushed, measured, and named.
And about the moments we are made into the other
or make others into one.
As you listen, ask yourself:
When have I been shaped?
And when have I been the one shaping?
//Look at what they did to me.
I was pressed into a shape
I did not choose.
Every attempt to push back, only marked me further.
I know my worth.
Still, it is denied.
The shape tightens.
Expands beyond me.
Crushing from the outside, burning from within.
My blood boils, searching for release.
I ask myself— is this what it means to be human
inside their form?//
//A heavy pressure on my chest.
A cold sensation rushes over my body.
My limbs cannot move. It is cold. Why am I grasping for air?
Someone pushed me into freezing water. And now. Now I am sinking.
I want to scream, but no sound escapes.
As the surface grows farther away, light breaks apart above me.
I try to reach for them, but my arms move too slowly.
I can see them,
Unaware, uninterrupted, unbothered.
As I sink, parts of me disappear quietly.
Is one push enough to erase a person?//
//Their looks arrive first.
Sharp.
Silent.
Unavoidable.
They do not see me.
They watch me.
Judging.
Measuring.
Counting what fits and what does not.
I am no longer someone to be respected.
I am something to be placed, named, kept apart.
Their silence teaches me where I don’t belong.
Their gaze moves inside my body,
until their beliefs feel like my own.//
//They named me by what they feared.
I lived as someone’s shadow
insecure, wounded, afraid.
There is sickness.
It hurts.
It takes space.
But something resists.
It does not announce itself.
It does not ask to be seen.
And I stand,
not unbroken,
not unscarred,
but unmoved.
I insist on complexity.
On contradiction.
On being more than their measure.
I insist on who I am.
A human.//
Othering is not abstract.
It is practiced.
In the way we look.
In the shapes we enforce.
In who we allow to remain visible.
Before you leave, ask yourself:
Who have I shaped to feel smaller?
And who has shaped me?
What would it mean to let humanity remain unfinished, unmeasured, and shared?