AUDIO AND MULTIMEDIA WORKS

Sarah Samba Mayangi

"Can You Hear Me?": Birth-Worker Testimonies

2023

Digital Media

00:00:00 - 00:08:09

Courtesy of Birth-Workers Oral History Project

Description:

While critically engaging with my memories and using Jacques Derrida's hauntology theory in the context of birth-work, I embarked on an exploration that aimed to blur multiple lines of demarcation. This exploration aimed to understand the potential outcomes of merging several elements: interviewing, activating oral histories, storytelling, crafting creative nonfiction narratives, and the art of playwriting. Furthermore, my inquiry delved into the scope and possibilities of employing artistic processes and their byproducts to create a safe(r) and more vulnerable, reparative, imaginative, and generative space, conducive to healing and transformative beginnings.

I conducted interviews with a diverse group of birth-workers and healthcare professionals of various identities, statuses, values, and stakes. Throughout these interviews, I employed creative storytelling techniques to harness the data obtained from these conversations and the compilation of oral histories. This synthesis involved a blend of factual elements and competing realities, community oral histories and insights, storytelling, scripted components, reenactment, and embodiment through voice acting, audio manipulation, distinct stylistic vision, both the art and science of editorial decision-making and the full process of art-making.

These multiple elements converged to form both an inter-artistic creative practice and a fusion product. As a result, I crafted a story that transformed and amalgamated the varying interview components into a more expansive, interlinked, narrative-driven, and multi-disciplinary creative piece. Similar to Derrida's hauntology, "Can You Hear Me?: Birth-Worker Testimonies (2022) is an ongoing and vigilant clarion. It boldly pokes at notions of truth and “the truth” by blurring the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction.