PEARLS - fieldresearch

Since 2017, during several working stays in Athens and other locations, I have been researching the after-effects of collective trauma on contemporary social life in Greece. I was interested in how political and historical events become inscribed in family histories, how they continue to resonate through speechlessness and silence, and how they thereby shape social and societal spaces.

In 2024, I developed an intuitive, experimental research setting in which three protagonists became co-researchers. Together, we went to their personal sites of pain. There, we investigated the spatial, bodily and social conditions under which perception, language, judgement and collective action can emerge – or be prevented. Central to this was the question of how a space of trust can emerge in which action becomes possible again and reconciliation can be conceived as a form of such action.

The performers brought their family traumas into the process. Trust, shared vulnerability, the body and movement became carriers of knowledge. We searched for gestures, movements and rituals as forms of remembering and letting go. A filmmaker documented these research blocks.

The insights and experiences gained through this process informed a concluding performative negotiation in spring 2026, which was also recorded on film. An essayistic short film is being developed from the video material.