Apart From Us, 2022
performance

Before speaking up, most people facing injustice endure it in silence. Stigmatization, shame, and others’ unwillingness to listen prevent survivors from standing up for themselves and others. Seline Baumgartner's Apart from Us listens to voices and gives them a new language to express themselves.

Until 1981, without court judgment, over three hundred thousand people, including children, fell victim to administrative detention in Switzerland; they were taken from their families and exploited as forced laborers, and sometimes even incarcerated. These coercive welfare measures form a dark chapter of Swiss history, one that left these individuals in pain and had a long-lasting impact on their lives. Besides remembering this wrongful past and retelling the stories of survivors, the act of listening becomes crucial. Together with dancers and the artist Seline Baumgartner the survivors create choreographies through which they channel their traumatic memories. By turning memories into movements Baumgartner both opens a dark chapter from the past and triggers a healing process.