My questions:
How can I help women cope with hardship during immigration using sensory mediation?
A few months ago, hardship came into my life, shook my world and turned me and my family's life around. I was shocked and overwhelmed, I felt like I lost my inner compass, can’t make any decision, can’t trust anyone, can’t connect with my instincts, my guts, my intuition. I couldn’t eat nor sleep.
Within a week or so, I started meeting a psychologist, who helps me cope with my hardship and to slowly gain strength.
My hardship is complex since I’m not one of the characters in the story, my story is my experience and the way I’m coping with this situation. My roles as a wife and a mother were to conflict and I had to make my decision and live with it.
Research
After a while, I gradually started hardship routine which is a step ahead from an emergency mode. I decided to let go of my original research and turn my MA project into my personal voyage and vice versa:
I have identified my elements and started inspecting them: I’m a woman, I have children, I'm an immigrant (relocated from my homeland), I’m experiencing hardship, I’m from Israel. I wanted to know how other women cope with their hardship, what kind of support are they looking for, what kind of support did they receive, I looked into some NGO services and so far could not identify any services to support "self resourced immigrants".
Research methods:
I started to search for some data by posting "open call" on some relevant Facebook groups of Israeli women in relocation, which led to dozens of responses (quantity) to whom I sent a short a detailed message with some directed questions. More than half of them got back to me, and not all of them were relevant.
I realise that in order for me to understand the meaning of their hardship and how they experience it in extent, qualitative research methods will be more effective to my research so I interviewed the most relevant ones in more depth, in all mediums (emails, WhatsApp, messenger, phone, and face to face), they were all Israeli women who relocated to the UK, USA, Europe and Africa, I continued narrowing it down, and for the time been I've ended up with about five relevant women - all mothers who moved to the UK with no intention to move back (immigrates). Since they are all mothers, the feminist research method is used as well.
While conducting these life history interviews I use action methodology: we both discover intimate and sensory details from their experience. I collect evidence on sensory experience to cope with hardship, ideas, thoughts and feeling.
For the next stage, I'm planning to go further with my research into action methodology as part of my next intervention. Since I have two roles in my research: as the researcher/facilitator and a part of the group.
I would also like to expend my research and interview women that immigrated from other countries to the UK to have another aspect of their idea of coping with hardship.
I visited art exhibitions of artists that come from an immigration background and demonstrate their difficulties, hardship, struggle using the medium of fine art - photos, drawings, prints and video. My interviews with some of the artists are still pending so I will consider my data as part of secondary research since it came from interviews and critiques. Other secondary research I used came from the books "Covert passengers" by Ortal Slobodin, that I interviewed as well (can be view in my blog).
Inspired by the art and the interviews, I created a video of myself performing my personal take of coping with distress during immigration. I used a shirt that I designed while I was a fashion designer, and I videoed myself wearing it in various ways, to display the way that I interact with my surrounding. The ways I want to be seen and the way that I actually appear, the ways that I struggle to fit it and the ways that become me. I'm conducting my experience of "lost in translation" and "English as a second language", in the cultural specific that I practice.
I'm trying to transport emotions such as stress, restless, anxious, unsettled, overwhelming, confusion, hectic and general discomfort.
I did it in one shot and edit the video - doubled the speed to add a chaotical element to the video and cut and add some frames that display some of the sensory mediations that are being used by the women I interviewed to cope with their difficulties. I added 2 different soundtrack: To the video, I used one of the guided mindfulness meditation I practice as part of coping with my hardship, that helps me gain my strength, inner peace, comfort, centre etc. I paired the short frames with downloaded soundtrack called "alien sunset" from the ambient genre, to emphasize being alien as adding another disturbing layer to my performance that keeps us alert.
As part of my intervention, I have exhibited my video to people in my community: Israeli women who relocated outside of Israel, friends, and family, artists, academic etc. So far I received supportive reactions and I would like to proceed with my intervention and present my video performance to a wider circle of people, especially women.
Next steps:
Intervention: I would like to create an interaction between a group of women I interviewed and sensory mediation that they refer to or between them, I plan this to be an intimate and personal encounter.
Workshop: I would like to produce a creative workshop using textile as a sensory mediation, for women to interact with textiles, connect with their feelings and difficulties while storytelling, sharing their experience and empowering others.
Exhibition: I would like to proceed and curate an interactive exhibition - I would like to display some art mediation ideas that I have and would like to display them in a space where women can interact with the objects and with each other to create a supportive environment, safe zone that encourage women to share their stories and empower themselves and others.
Collaboration: I would like to collaborate with one of the NGO that focuses on migration to allocate a space to support women and families during migration - to provide mental support in a creative way using storytelling and community that will help women to cope with their difficulties, and hardship, empower them and let them feel safe and secure, home outside their homeland.
Strengths of my research process:
This is a very personal project and process. The interviews, sharing the stories and the intervention are very intimate. I'm very engaged in the process and I feel I'm more focused now, and my next steps are getting clearer. I'm in the middle of an emotional journey, I relate to most of the stories and reflect a lot on my experience and what my project became.
weaknesses of my research process:
Some points of my strength are actually my weaknesses: I might get too involved with the women I interviewed.
I'm not sure where this project is going to lead me since I'm not sure yet where my life is going to lead me now.
My journey is still going since I'm struggling every day and not sure what my next step will be.
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