Scream like Scream

10 Dec 2020

CORONACULTURE. Do you feel the need to shout out your anxiety and frustration over the pandemic? Mathias Jansson gives tips on how you can handle it all in a cultured way.

This year, it has been felt on several occasions that one would just want to scream out of frustration and anxiety. But do not shout for deaf ears, instead call + 1-561-567-8431 and share your scream in an ongoing work of art. It is the artist Chris Gollmar who has opened the scream line " Just Scream!" which collects our cries until January 21, 2021.

Because that anxiety can really show up at any time, like when you walk with your friends on a bridge in Oslo on a summer evening, when the sky is so beautiful red-yellow. Then it can suddenly happen: "I felt how a loud, endless scream permeated nature" writes the artist Edvard Munch about the creation of the painting "Scream" (1893).

Another artist who also screamed a lot is Marina Abramović who in the performance work "Freeing the Voice" from 1976 screamed and screamed and screamed until she completely lost her voice. I suppose she feels a certain kinship with Munch because in the autumn of 2013, on the 150th anniversary of Munch's birth, she created at Ekebergsparken, with a view of Munch's upset landscape, a performance where 300 of Oslo's residents would shout to pay tribute to "Scream ”. Abramović then unveiled a more permanent work, which consisted of a picture frame where each visitor could then recreate his own "Scream" and of course take a picture.

The scream acts as a warning signal to the group that something is happening in the surroundings. A lion jumps out of the bush, we scream loudly in fear, so the others in the group can come to the rescue, or put their legs on their backs and save themselves. Maybe it's enough for one of the group to become lion food? This is why some people of pure reflex scream when they see a horror movie and the monster jumps out from behind the door. For us other accustomed horror movie enthusiasts who are not afraid of a monster, it may instead be the friend's unexpected scream that makes us jump high off the couch and put ourselves in a defensive position.

Sometimes when the emotions overflow, you simply have to leave the room and go into another room to vent your frustration, so that you can then go back to the meeting or to your children and masterfully try to explain to them why they are wrong. The artist Babak Golkar has in a quote said that "When logic fails to explain, it becomes natural to scream". For this purpose, he has created "Scream Pots", which are large clay pots where visitors to the exhibition can shout out their frustration and release the negative energy they carry within them. The pots are rotated so that the sound is attenuated and slowed down. Even the artist Kylin O'Brien has taken note of our need to ventilate our emotions. In the installation "Scream Room", which is a room as big as a closet with white soundproof walls, the visitor can go in and shout out their frustration.

Golkar's scream pots make me think of the myth of King Midas. Midas is best known for wanting the ability to turn everything he touched into gold, but he also helped resolve a dispute between two gods (anyone who knows their ancient mythology knows that one should never meddle in the gods' litigation) . In any case, Midas thought that Pan played much better music than Apollo, which made Apollo so furious that he thanked Midas by giving him donkey ears.

Now it's not so fun to walk around with donkey ears if you're king, so Midas did everything to hide them. But he was a bit vain and wanted a beautiful hairstyle (that the long hair would hide the donkey ears he probably did not think of), so he called his hairdresser and made him swear not to reveal to anyone that he had donkey ears. The hairdresser cut Midas, but some secrets are too difficult to carry and in order not to perish from this heavy burden, the hairdresser dug a pit by the beach and shouted in the hole "King Midas has donkey ears!" and then dug the hole again. The hole was thus an early version of Golkar's "Scream Pots" and Kylin O'Brien's "Scream Room". Everything would have been peace and joy, if a reed grove had not grown up on the spot, swaying in the wind and gossiping "King Midas has donkey ears!"

A group with great anxiety are otherwise students, preferably when the exam is approaching and they realize that they have probably partied more than read before the exam. But the students have solved the problem in a creative way. Delphivrålet and Flogstavrålet is a tradition where students from the area Delphi in Lund and Flogsta in Uppsala, respectively, open their windows and shout out their anxiety. There are various legends about how it all came about, but since the 80's it has at least roared from student housing. A sensible way to deal with your anxiety. Whether it also helps to improve exam results does not tell the story.

All cries do not have to spring from anxiety and fear. There are also cries of joy.

" Do not be afraid Birk," said Ronja. Now comes my spring cry! And she cried, like a bird, a cry of rejoicing, so that it was heard far away in the forest . "

It would have been great if we could all in the spring exchange our cries of anxiety for a spring cry of joy when we have received a vaccine against covid-19 and can go out in the spring sun and start meeting and hugging our loved ones again.