ABOUT THE PROJECT
The Slice/Silence project
Slice/Silence is a survivor-led, interactive arts project about the silencing that surrounds self-injury, silencing and injustice.
It’s an invitation to join me in exploring the things we are not normally allowed to say…
- To explore the experience of self-injury
- To talk about the impacts of being silenced
- To consider what silence means, given that most of us are survivors of trauma and injustice (which is also silenced)
- To share what it means in our lives to be silenced and hidden by society, rather than be heard and respected
- And to offer and receive solidarity and compassion as we connect with each other.
Exploring what might lie at the intersection of art, peer support, resistance & community
I am passionately interested in alternatives to mainstream mental health services, which, for me, have been violent, traumatic, blaming and unhelpful. In this project I was curious about bringing together that interest with my arts practice, and a more emancipatory approach to being with other survivors.
The Big Anxiety Festival
Slice/silence was first commissioned as an interactive installation for the The Big Anxiety Forum in Naarm/Melbourne during 2022.
PhD
The first pilot of Slice/Silence felt so powerful that I wanted to take it further, so I enrolled in a PhD program at the University of NSW, in the School of Art and Design.
I’ve dedicated the next few years to expanding Slice/Silence as a survivor-led project, and will be doing arts-based, participatory research with other survivors.
I’m planning to offer Slice/Silence in 2024 in a dedicated space for an extended period of time (although I also have to raise funds to make this happen).
ABOUT ME
My name is Indigo Daya. I’m a survivor activist and artist (read more about me on my personal blog).
I felt compelled to create this project after self-injury reappeared in my life after almost a decade of not using it.
Self-injury used to be something I did all the time in the ‘old days’ when I was locked in psych units on a regular basis.
In this past year (2022), many old traumas have come back into my life, and at times the pain of it has felt unbearable.
One night, I felt like I could see my old abusers, ghostly and transparent, walking across the room towards me. They bent down and then sat, into my body, and became a part of me. I was battling the idea that the men who raped me are a part of me, that I am like them, that I am fundamentally bad. This is the kind of madness that trauma can leave with us.
I didn’t want to go back to self-injury. It felt like a failure. I tried so hard. One night I even wrote all over my arm naming the ways my arm has helped me, let me down, held me, and been hurt.
But I did start injuring again.
And, with support from good people, I came to see that this was not in fact a failure. Rather, it was me doing my best to survive terrible pain. I made space for it, and I continue to, when it feels helpful.
I was so saddened to realise, like in the old days, that this was something society expected me to hide. Cover the wounds, cover the scars, even when they’ve healed. Otherwise my body might be ‘triggering’ to others. Don’t talk about it too much or I will be called attention-seeking. Borderline, Disordered. Broken.
As I have been working through this return of trauma, I am struck that my body is considered a trigger, a gun, a dangerous weapon.
I am supposed to give people warnings about my injured body, yet no-one ever gave me warnings about the hell I was about to enter when I asked the mental health system for help.
I remember being told as a young girl that I should cover up or I was inviting sexual violence. And now, as I continue to live with the emotional pain of rape, my body is still considered to be dangerous.
Always, it is the victim who is blamed.
On social media people can report me for mentioning self-injury, or showing any scars. In everyday life, people could call mental health services or police who could use force against me. Yet not one of my three rapists ever faced justice.
I wish that trigger warnings were put on rapists, and on violent mental health services, not on the bodies and stories of us survivors.