An Elongated Shrieking Song That Envisions Glimpses of Liberation Through Overwhelm

In “An Elongated Shrieking Song That Envisions Glimpses of Liberation through Overwhelm” I explore my artistic practice of moaning through the lens of “traumatophilia” and “overwhelm” as proposed by Avgi Saketopoulou, a Greek psycho-analyst practicing in New York. I am braiding into these reflections the question of Saidiya Hartman’s in “Venus in Two Acts” that has been delightfully haunting me, that is: “What are the kinds of stories to be told by those and about those who live in such an intimate relationship with death? Romances? Tragedies? Shrieks that find their way into speech and song?” This contemplation on the moan calls for a renewed relationship to cultural performances of loss and grief as forms of protest and disruption of public amnesia, in times of rising fascism, militarisation and ongoing genocides.