The quote I chose to write on the
board during our workshop was “violence can be silent”. I thought this was a
very important perspective I had not really thought of before. When Elina
Penttinen started the activity, to be completely honest, I was very skeptical.
I am not usually the kind of person that enjoys those particular kinds of
creative exercises. However, after the first few moments of uncomfortable
silence, I really did allow myself to follow Elina’s words of instructions.
When we began to draw, images flowed surprisingly quite easily to me. The first
set of instructions, conjured up thoughts of huge explosions and graphic human
interactions. My first image was of a military soldier, decorated in an array
of intricate medals and badges. The second featured a mushroom cloud of an
atomic bomb and the last was the skeleton of a destroyed city.
When we got into our smaller groups
to discuss our images, Sarai Aharoni pointed out how many of our images
depicted the typical media representation of war. Depictions of soldiers, bombs
and destruction, although important, do not take into account how violent
silence can be. Sarai discussed how not giving people a voice is a type of
violence, and I realized how true this was. By excluding certain groups from
contributing, like women in peace negotiations, perpetuates a type of violence
that many do not attribute to having the same impacts as a bomb, but it does.
This really made me think about how, violence is not always ‘in your face’ and
detectable. Perhaps, some of the most violent realities in our world are
silent, and their silence is what allows them to be so destructive and pervasive.
--Erika
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