HENRIETTA SOININEN

Si grito ojalá que me escuchen - If I scream hopefully they'll hear me (2015)

In this installation the testimonies of sexual harassment function as a tool to address a linguistic problem related to the use of criminological terms such as: testimony, evidence and crime scene and at the same time makes us question the limit between fiction and documentary. In art, does it even matter whether an image is fictional or documentary?

This piece questions the concept of testimony as such by manipulating the information that is delivered to the spectator, and rises a question whether the veracity of the image matters more than the effect it provokes in the public.

What happens to the testimony when it is interpreted by several people without changing its original content? At first it is narrated by the victim, later it is recorded, transcribed and converted to a film script format by the artist and finally read by a third person. Is it possible that the testimony maintains its informative value without losing its veracity even though it is interpreted by different people in different ways?

The piece “If I scream hopefully they'll hear me” does not approach the testimonies of sexual harassment in a documentary nor journalistic way, but in a subjective, personal and artistic way. By constructing these stories visually, finction is being created from something documentary. The important thing is the sensations that the visual material provokes when it is exposed together with the testimonies.