On March 2nd, 2019 we held an “Errant women – Vándorló nők” group session for the first time in Pécs, Hungary.
It was multilingual space (HU-EN-ES) aimed at welcoming both migrant women living in Hungary and Hungarian women with or without experience of migration, who felt like they were not represented mainstream narratives.
For three hours, we gathered and connected by interweaving personal stories into collective narratives working with our bodies, emotions and life experiences.
W started by introducing ourselves with a collective activity: we had previously asked the participants to bring an object or more that hold a special personal value for them, and each of them had the chance to introduce herself by telling the story such object(s). Then, all of us together tied a wool thread around them, creating a network of objects.
After introducing ourselves to the rest of the group, we interacted with our bodies, guided by touch and gestures, trying to interpret others’ emotions through a range of activities: first by “expressing” other people’s feelings with body movements, then by gathering in a circle (with closed eyes) we did a free association activity, telling what words our hands could tell about us and collecting them on a collective piece of paper.
After collecting such words, each participant drew a silhouette around them and created an ‘I-poem’ by putting “I am” before each word previously written.
Later, we collectively selected one or two recurrent words from our I-poems and, in couples, we told one another a short story about our life, while the other person, silently listening, wrote the most important words of our stories on our back.
Then, with open and closed eyes, we danced with different parts of our bodies, letting our energies flow.
Finally, we placed ourselves in the room and moved in the space while drawing a “living map” according to different moments/experiences in our lives (birth/childhood, first love, first travel, the most important experience abroad, etc.).
TuTela 