Staywithme
Before and even after, many people died, were killed.
Wars have not yet ended and never will.
Martial law, unjustifiable executions, military governments, gynocides... Really, what kept us alive during those periods... How did we look, what was happening, what did we see, were we able to see? If we weren’t able to see, then what was it that had blinded us?
Maybe we had grown accustomed to a lot, we had become immune to it all.
Maybe listening to all the coverage entitled “live broadcasts” every night had inured us. Yes, this was probably why we changed channels so often and thus, were allowing other dreams to draw us into new realms. Yes, this was called forgetting, and we had managed to learn how to do this.
I am returning to the first question: What was it ?What happened? Do we know the answer?
There was so much happening at every single moment that the sentence we had constructed to fool ourselves was ready; we just weren’t able to keep up.
At a point, as we were just standing there, “something” else began. We were on the streets. Side by side. We didn’t even know each other, but we were side by side. We were there. We had learned to keep our doors open, to put buckets full of water in front of the apartment, and in case of arrest: to post a document showing our rights on the door of the apartment, and to note the situation on every street we passed , and tweet it to one another.
This was the hope itself. The spirit of solidarity, the challenge, standing side by side.
Then... Nothing changed. We clammed up. Now, we are tired.
Is it possible to remember this hope?
We have to start somewhere...
' Stay With me’ takes from here; taking notes, documenting, drawing; remembering the hope with the association of these narrations.
The title ‘Stay with me; is chosen because it expresses a last resort when the hope is fading “hold on, don’t give up’. It grew as a slogan that expresses a collective effort where everyone is involved and holding on together.
‘Stay with me; is composed of notebooks that indicate limitless fear, insecurity, existence in obscurity as well as hope, reality, future and the ‘moment’, by 84 participants.