Using the gestural cutting out of paper dolls as a collective act of healing and resistance, ‘Cutting Out’ is the lyrical, gutsy journey of Viv Gordon’s survival. From inside a tipi, where the transition to being a new mum triggered her memory, Viv Gordon’s life changed forever, and she started writing. Blurring the edges between artist and audience, activism and story told through music and performance, ‘Cutting Out’ delivers with honesty, humour and generosity. We sat down with Viv to discuss her upcoming performance.
Viv, “Cutting Out” feels like such a deeply personal and powerful act of storytelling. What was the moment you knew this piece had to be shared publicly?
I’ve been making work exploring the politics of survival for 10 years now grounded in my personal lived experience of child sexual abuse (CSA). My artistic practice is a constant search to voice impossible things and to engage audiences in this very hidden history. I often call my work auto-ethnographic – which means I use my art-making to harness my personal story to wider socio-political issues. The moment I knew I wanted to do this work was when I understood my personal experiences as part of a bigger picture. Speaking out publicly became possible when I worked out how to put the right scaffolding and collaborations around me to do this work safely and sustainably.
The imagery of the paper dolls is both tender and defiant. How did this symbol first come to you, and what does it represent in your healing journey?
I love that it reads as tender and defiant – that is totally the vibe of the work. The image came after reading an NSPCC report estimating there are 11 million adult CSA survivors in the UK. I was searching for a way to visualise that incomprehensible number – to make it feel real and not abstract. Paper dolls powerfully evoke childhood. The ubiquity and fragility of paper speaks to the themes of the work. The most important thing about them is they are holding hands and connected which is opposite to the survivor experience that can be very lonely. This became the catalyst for the storytelling in Cutting Out, which focuses on my journey from abuse to activism, from isolation to connection, told through the lens of my hands.
You blur the lines between performance, installation, and activism so seamlessly. How do you balance these elements while still keeping the story so intimate and honest?
The three elements are intrinsically connected and speak to each other. Like I said, The image of the dolls came first, and the writing developed in response. The show happens within the installation, which grows with every performance, as we invite audiences to cut out paper dolls to join a collective act of resistance.. The dolls are very alive for me – towards the end of the show I talk about different survivors and activists and many of the dolls represent people I know. The intimacy and honesty in the performance is about bringing one story – my story – alive for an audience and then placing it within a visual representation of 11 million lived stories that are each as complex and nuanced, to provoke curiosity not in a voyeuristic way but to challenge our status as “other”. The three elements work together to do that.
You speak of moving from “a vacuum of silence” to forming a whole company around creative expression. What has surprised you most in building that community and body of work?
At the beginning, I was very scared and uncertain. It’s culturally transgressive to visibly self-identify as a CSA survivor. We are conditioned to be silent and I have to consciously override that every time I perform. In terms of surprises, I am consistently delighted by the depth of creativity survivors bring – the untapped talent. Our company mission is to harness our creativity to a radical agenda of changemaking and showcase what is possible when we remove barriers to CSA survivor participation in the arts. Building a body of work has been about finding out how to tell these stories, reaching and risking and sometimes failing. I’ve come through a very unconventional route into my arts practice and so I have had to learn on the job. Cutting Out is bold and crafted – hitting the content head on with lots of care and rage and also humour threaded through.
For audiences who might be survivors themselves, what do you hope they take away from “Cutting Out”?
It will be very individual for each person, but I hope that survivors and allies come away from the show feeling more connected and part of an emerging community. Being a survivor can be incredibly lonely and our experiences are still shrouded in shame and silence. Cutting Out flips the narrative to celebrate our survival and dare to feel pride. It’s a political reframing that audiences tell me feels very liberating and hopeful. We want audiences to feel motivated for social change, to feel more confident talking about CSA survival and to join our campaign to cut out 11 million dolls which represent our community taking up cultural space, being visible and having ownership of our own narratives.
More information about Cutting Out can be found here.