“The fact that we are here […] is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.” (Audre Lorde)
Chants are rhythmic slogans repeated collectively to speak up against violence, to issue our demands, to shout out our anger, to echo and to tune into each other’s voices. On the streets, chants travel from body to body, from language to language, from your city to mine, because all struggles against oppression are connected.
Invited by Reading Rhythms Club, on Saturday May 11th we held a collective reading of our text “Solidarity Hums” that reflects on the physical and metaphorical implications of chanting together, becoming megaphones, letter writing, wall tagging and other tools of solidarity and amplifying each other’s voices. We discussed the intersections between different struggles for justice and how these links often get obfuscated by media narratives that focus on short-term urgencies and render them isolated. Together, we collected chants and reflected on the rhetorics that call into question what is considered a struggle and what not, while foregrounding the necessity of feminist solidarity.
Read the event digest by Reading Rhythms Club prepared by Julia Wilhelms, and listen to the recording of the collective reading prepared by Senka Milutinovic, here. This event was a part of Guts Tongues Teeth section of Reading Rhythms Club’s program 2024, supported by Gemeente Rotterdam and Creative Industries Funds NL.
WORKNOT! 