Much of Aay Liparoto’s (1987, USA) work centres around how we often take our everyday relationships with objects and people and the social structures that define them for granted, and how we easily fail to notice how these interactions in turn shape our everyday experiences. Their practice consists of different methods to highlight the often-overlooked power dynamics that can exist within these relationships, from performing and creating scenarios, using video and text, to hosting workshops. Liparoto’s methodology began with their nine-month-long daily performance project called Andrew Has His Period (2014) and the experimental documentary Andrew a Strong Courageous Warrior (2016), a reflection on the performance of normative, binary definitions of gender. Ultimately, their work encourages us to question and reflect on our own experiences and relationships, and the role of our choices and behaviour in shaping them.
In argos in Brussels, as part of the C0N10UR biennial, Liparoto continues this unpacking of the everyday with a cinematic 360-degree virtual reality experience. ‘Small Acts of Violence’ explores the entanglement of love, non-consensual physical violence, and self-harm in intimate and family relationships. When I visited argos, the space was enveloped in an indeterminate mood. In the long room, the daylight disappears in green, orange and pink spotlights that focus on things scattered around in little islands, such as broken glass, low walls made of loosely stacked bricks, and ceramic vases, some of which smashed or broken, with cups placed around them as if inviting us to a tea party, as a prelude to entering the virtual space.
At the back of the space are three tent-like cabins draped in soft orange velvet, where a mediator awaits people to welcome them. I am invited to take off my shoes and sit down inside one of the tents on the soft, cushy material. The mediator helps me put on a headset to enter the immersive reality of ‘Small Acts of Violence’. The audio-visual stories evolve everywhere around me. By turning my head, I can decide what I want to pay attention to or what I’d rather not witness. And because of it, the looping cinematic experience never really ends except when I decide to leave. Within the virtual space, I am welcomed in a colourful and playful world filled with scenes embodied by seven performers who act out situations of care and tenderness, but also self-harm. Meanwhile, a voice, the voice of Love, is speaking to me. They recount anecdotes of love and violence, or rather of violence folded into love, and directly and indirectly provoke questions. What happens when experiencing love is accompanied by physical or verbal violence? Do we recognise ourselves when we are the violent ones? How do love and violence relate to safety? I am constantly reminded of my autonomy: Will I leave or do I choose to stay?
Bas Blaasse
‘Small Acts of Violence’ shows and tells of daily interactions and places and situations that, at least on the surface, we tend to associate with safety and intimacy. A bed or a bathtub suggests the environment of a home. Much of your work is related to everyday relationships or intimacy in general.
Aay Liparoto
I am invested in how things around you that seem rather ordinary or banal shape you without you necessarily giving them much attention. I think this focus on the power of everyday small actions intensified for me in unpacking queer and non-binary identities in my thirties. I became more reflective of patterns in relationships that seem almost invisible through intimacy.
BB
Can you say something about where and how you started working on ‘Small Acts of Violence’?
AL
As with many projects, the core comes from lived experience processing my own experiences of deconstructing love that is entangled with physical violence, self-harm, coercion and control within family and intimacy. It started as an informal collection of stories from my own life and friends and incidental anecdotal reports of different layers of domestic violence and the perpetration of violence towards oneself and others in intimate relationships. I very often work with open calls. I always knew I wanted to reach out to others to give space to hear from non-male perpetrators about their experiences.
BB
So you were explicitly looking for perpetrators?
AL
I was exclusively looking for self-identified perpetrators, without a desire to judge but to reflect on intergenerational patterns of violence. There were people I knew already who had shared quite intense stories about violence in female friendship, for example, or about maternal violence from a more typical focused position of victim. I wanted to delve more into the perpetrator’s perspective of these stories.
BB
Did you already consider working with Virtual Reality when you were conducting the interviews and collecting stories?
AL
By the time I was doing interviews, it was a VR project. The whole project structure had already been written when I applied for funding with argos back in 2021. The focus was small acts of transgressiveness and perhaps lesser-known or less visible forms of violence exclusively focused on female, nonbinary and non-cis male perpetrators. Back in 2014, when I started researching it, it wasn’t easy to find information and support around female domestic violence. So, I asked myself, where are these stories?
BB
I’m curious about how you deal with working with people sharing stories that can be traumatising in many ways. How do you see your role?
AL
It was an open call, so people came forward with the wish to share. But you have to be very conscious and caring. We spoke really clearly with each other about the framework prior to the interviews. I asked them about their support system. And our conversations were really a back-and-forth. So, there was a strong sense of sharing and recognition between us. Even though many of us had very different stories. What I found really beautiful was the generosity and willingness of the participants to be so honest about things that, most of the time, we all want to hide. And I feel thankful for people letting me share and use their stories, intimate stories about themselves and the complexity of families, stories that were acted out to them.
BB
As viewers, or listeners, we don’t get to hear the direct voices of the different testimonies on which the story is built. There is only one voice that speaks to us in a quite disjointed way. Moreover, they are constantly addressing us by posing questions related to what we see and hear.
AL
Indeed, everything is condensed into a single voice, and it’s the voice of Love, which is the gorgeous voice of performance artist and writer Conway McDermott. These pieces don’t create a single coherent narrative but ask the user to try and make sense of this family themselves. I’ve heard some people try to figure out which story goes with what image, projecting their own visions on the characters, such as the ‘Mother’ character, which does not exist clearly in my work with the performers. But working on the choreography with the wonderful Lucia Palladino, we definitely leaned into this ambiguity of actions and roles. You are immersed in a cocktail of different stories and behaviours. The fragmentation also relates to the fact that, often, behaviour gets reproduced, and patterns reoccur as a function of trauma.
BB
Violence masked as daily behaviour…
AL
Yes. And there’s something eerily recognisable in the functional level of violence. That it has a purpose and a function, and even that violence towards yourself or to others can, in fact, feel safe. And that the absence of violence can feel more foreign and strange.
BB
I would have never coupled the absence of violence with unsafety.
AL
This was a common experience when talking with the interviewees that, in certain situations, you can find comfort in the familiarity of violence. I’m not talking about the most extreme or worst cases. But it’s about the fact that when there is no violence, you can be constantly walking on eggshells, anticipating horrible things that might happen. And in a way, when there is violence, it is as if you are no longer waiting for something to happen. Something’s already bad.
BB
The world of ‘Small Acts of Violence’ does appear very pretty, warm, very welcoming. Is there a connection with the fact that violence is sometimes related to something comfortable?
AL
Yes, one of the crucial questions in the work is why violence can feel nice. Sometimes, it's wrapped up in so much love and so many positive, good things. The voice of Love ensures we feel okay and cared for. It comes with a lot of love, we’re witnessing mainly loving acts of the performers to each other, even though you hear the stories of self-harm and harm done to others.
BB
Can you say something about the role of the mediator? In a way, they do the same thing as the voice in the story.
AL
The mediator acts as a guide, providing care throughout the experience. It’s about the idea of not wanting to reproduce patterns of violence in the work itself. We watch movies with high levels of violence all the time, so purely reproducing more violence was never the aim. Creating a space to be reflective and accountable for your behaviour was essential for me. The mediator guides you throughout the experience, assuring you feel safe and loved. They will help you enter the work, and afterwards, they will ask for your feedback to discuss how you feel about the experience. One of the topics discussed in the performance mediator training was setting boundaries, including how to avoid receiving too much from people. All of them have experience in caring and performance and want to create a space for the audience to share. But still, it was necessary to talk about negotiating their own emotional capacities and experiences.
BB
This is your first work with Virtual Reality. How did you come to use VR?
AL
I have always been interested in immersive experiences, like immersive theater performances or clubbing. And I’m interested in how you can create a space, a whole environment. How do you seduce someone into an experience? Being a good host plays a vital role in this, which is something I enjoy. I like hosting. When I was looking for a format, I knew a film wouldn’t be enough for the type of storytelling of the project, which is really about questioning your choices and how things can be different depending on them. And then, I went to do a residency in FACT in Liverpool, a media arts space. There, I encountered interesting VR works and got in touch with how VR technology allows you to combine multiple layers of storytelling simultaneously, with user choice and abstract intimacy.
BB
How does that work in Small Acts of Violence? We cannot really move around other than turning our heads.
AL
I think that in this work, you have limited but powerful choices. You can choose certain things but not others. This was important to me. When you engage in a relationship or storyline, you lose something else. Your actions change the outcome, meaning others may experience the story differently. It's like growing up with siblings in the same family. You can have such different experiences of, say, your parents or your environment.
BB
We’re at the centre of things, yet never really participating, or at least not actively. I remain a witness.
AL
You are invited to become a temporary family member, but you never become part of the family. This idea of being part of something and then also not, there’s something for me that relates to feeling isolated by shame, silence, and the question of what you share. It is really possible to create these conflicting feelings through the isolation and intimacy in the VR medium.
BB
How does the installation in the rest of the room actually relate to the VR experience?
AL
Inside the VR world is this visual cocktail of poppy, colourful things. But also broken things, alluding to fragility and potential pain. I have tried to mirror that in the whole installation. There is also this idea of manipulation. It seems all nice and gorgeous, but a lot of what's collaged in comes from blood, mould, bruises, and rotting fruit and flowers. I've kept a collection of mouldy tea bags, coffee, and wine glasses – domestic things, but not representing how we’d like to think about our homes. We often project safety onto homes. But homes aren’t always the safest or nicest places for people. Bringing these dirty, basic collage techniques into a virtual world was really fun. And then working with a technology like VR also made me want to create a balance with something more physical or craft-based. Like casting a vase, which was also a new process for me. There was something satisfying in bringing very basic materials into this highly digital technology and something I love about this mishmash.
BB
How do you look back on the whole process, working with many collaborators such as the interviewees and performers?
AL
It was tough to live inside these stories and thematics for so long. Parts of the process were very isolating but working with such beautiful and caring performers and assistant Suzanne Cleerdin gave rays of light and warm moments in between. It is always a challenge to stay connected to both the storytelling process and practical dedication in long project. I still feel the urgency in the thematic on how we can love better and escape painful patterns so I am happy to give Small Acts of Violence over the public to experience.
Lees hier de Nederlandstalige versie van dit gesprek.
