Silence Will Not Protect Us
On February 25th, 2022, a student collective at the University of Oxford hosted a symposium on fighting against sexual violence, harassment, discrimination, and power in academia.
In our 12 years of doing visual minutes, this was one of the most moving, vulnerable, and human events we’ve had the privilege to have been a part of.
You can read through the five immediate changes to practices and policies, the organisers are demanding of the University of Oxford.
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you”
Audre Lorde, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, 1977
Visual Minutes by Jess Harvey & Isolde Godfrey
The technology of science
The rituals, the etiquette
the blurring of terms
silence not absence
of words or music or even
raw sounds
Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed
the blueprint to a life
It is a presence
it has a history a form
Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence
Adrienne Rich, “Cartographies of Silence," 1978