Few of us disclose what happened.

For those of us who do, we often wait years -- decades -- to speak out. It took me 25 years.

I was the 1 in 10.

I was alone, surrounded by a hypothetical group of nine people, who were somehow unaffected.

As a woman I am less distinct. I was alone in the company of three. I was only one of four. Those are official statistics, but I might as well be one of, or maybe one in, a Gazillion. It's hard to know.

I didn't want to be alone, but it's a hard truth to want to share. So for years I let myself be just one.

This kind of measuring hides our stories.
It leaves our communities undefined. It ignores the impact of childhood sexual abuse on our family and friends.

But disclosure does not have to be a static isolating moment if we embrace the unpredictable potential of trauma to catalyze healing, connection and resistance.



The Autonomous Memory Project

is a collective archive of individual responses to childhood sexual abuse. The archive takes recordings of our thoughts and plays them back reassembled as a collage of voices.

It refuses to let trauma reside alone in the abused body. It gives us a way to hear how violence reverberates and how resilience echoes through us all.

Each word submitted to the archive helps illustrate the pervasive impact of childhood sexual abuse on survivors and their communities; the acute need to do something about this epidemic; and the power we have to overcome sexual violence as a collective force.

This archive is the result of a lengthy creative and collaborative process that helped me to finally confront the gymnastics coach who was my abuser.

The first entries into the archive are mine, but it is not my voice alone. Starting on October 10, 2010 I began recording conversations with my dad for an assignment in my MFA program asking me to evoke being haunted. I used the project to turn the presence of trauma in my life into something I could actively and collaboratively engage with as opposed to something that was happening to me alone.

I'm offering this archive as a tool to help us all move through loneliness, pain, guilt or whatever you're feeling and get somewhere together.



Call the automated hotline to contribute:
518-314-9675

Do it because you want to help me with my art project. Or do it because you're ready to let it go. Your words will become collective, but your intention is all your own. Even if you don't call I hope it helps knowing that it's there.

Who can submit?

Anybody. This affects us all.

What happens to my submission?

Your message is transcribed by voice recognition software. As the archivist I listen to your submission and review the transcript to ensure the integrity of the message. Then your recording is broken down word-by-word and archived as individual audio files. Your submission is then automatically reassembled into what I'm calling a reverberation using words spoken by other contributors. We'll only hear your voice if you're the first person to submit that word to the archive. As the scope of the archive enhances the reverberations it produces will become more and more collective.

What should I say?

"Because trauma can be unspeakable and unrepresentable and because it is marked by forgetting and dissociation, it often seems to leave behind no records at all. It thus demands an unusual archive." - Ann Cvetkovich

So you could . . .
*read something from a book or recite a poem
*deposit a thought that needs a home outside your head
*speak something you've never said before
*share a thought about this project . . .

Submission guidelines:

*Don't say “Hi Tennessee” or introduce yourself. Just start talking.
*Don't say anything you're not ready for someone else to hear.
It's ok if you need more time.
* Call from a quiet place and speak slowly and clearly.
*If the hotline cuts you off just call back. You can leave as many 3-minute submissions as you want.

Where can I access all that's being shared?

The reverberations will air in batches on collaborating radio stations accompanied by an explanation of the Autonomous Memory Project. They will also be part of physical installations of the archive, allowing visitors to more deeply explore the evolving nature of the reverberations over time and the opportunity to read a curated collection of the transcripts.



First Recorded Moments of Disclosure

9:34 pm 10/09/2010 until around 1:30 am 10/10/2010
Conversation with my dad. After dinner in Scott Circle Park, Washington, DC. Driving in the car with my dad to where I used to do gymnastics in Virginia.

12:00 pm 02/09/2013
Pep talk with my friend Sam in her truck outside the gym before going in. Conversation with the gymnastics instructor. At the gym. Virginia.

11:00 am 02/22/2103
Conversation with the gymnastics instructor. At the gym. Virginia.

6:54 am until around 11:00 am 09/27/2013
Conversation with my dad walking around and eating breakfast. Portland, Maine



Hear the Reverberation

Tune into these radio stations:
February 20, 2014 8 pm Resonance 104.4fm London, UK



Who is The Autonomous Memory Front?

Dreamed up by Tennessee Watson

in collaboration with:
Yeshe Parks--software design
Kate Ryan--emotional/theoretical strategy
Sam Malone--reconnaissance
Bill Watson--copy edits


Thanks to bfamfaphd.com and Evan Remick for design inspiration, to Grayson Earle for hosting the site and to Jessie Reyes
for sharing your technical expertise.

*Thesis for Integrated Media Arts MFA, Hunter College, 2013*
My sincere gratitude goes to my advisors Marty Lucas, Rachel Stevens and Ros Petchesky; to the program director Andrew Lund; to the Program Coordinator Gayathri Iyer; and to Jonny Farrow, Ricardo Miranda, Sha Sha Feng, and Dean Moss, in whose classes I was able to shape the practice of embracing trauma.