Tom's NYC Against Sex Trafficking Journey blog 4.

Tuesday 10 November

Tuesday begins with 9am press conference Washington Place starring Mayor Bloomberg, Emma T and Helen B. Emma talks about how she met Elena (the inspiration behind JOURNEY) who was working in a local massage parlour. Emma listened as Elena told her heartbreaking story of being forced into prostitution. Emma wanted to do something. Not a film. But to invent an installation that would convey something of the experience. Elena remarked that if people could only feel for 5 minutes what it is like… So JOURNEY was born. The contributing artists have created a series of little storms you have to weather. It is a vivid facsimile. It is an invitation to feel. It will do what ever you allow it to. 13,000 people experienced it in London and many found it a bewildering and confrontational

JOURNEY opens to the public around lunchtime. The trickle turns into a stream and builds throughout the afternoon. At times the queue runs to 50 people with heads buried in the JOURNEY newspaper, which tells Elena’s story punctuated by Laura Carlin’s poignant illustrations. It is such a beautiful tactile object. The collision of childish handwriting, elegant aesthetic, and violent content compounds the shock.

We have a fantastic team from the Foundation in London, but also many volunteers living in New York City. They hum around in branded T-shirts, invite passers-by to experience the show, and cushion them when they emerge. Many visitors feel profoundly disorientated. We give them a form to fill in and ask for their thoughts. They rest on their clipboards and hunt for words which we pull together to strengthen our messages.

Some visitors want to talk – need to talk – can’t stop talking. We speak to a couple from the Anthropology Department at Connecticut University. They want to know if there is any escape, any cathartic redemption. We explain that there are few happy endings. Being trafficked for sexual exploitation is as brutal and nasty. Recovery is not about getting better. The trauma and loss of self - like any kind of torture - goes so deep, it fissures the rest of their lives.

Grim conversations about parents selling children today. Many families in developing countries are so terminally destitute, a westerner asking to buy their child is like a gift from the gods. Even if they suspect the child might be mistreated, it could be a route to EDUCATION as opposed to a vicious cycle of poverty. Many children are trafficked to work as domestic servants. Occasionally a neighbour might mention a passing concern to the police, and raids on affluent families in exclusive neighbourhoods reveal children forced into thankless servitude and living in cupboards. The KPIs (key selling points) of trafficked people is that they have no status, no rights, no protection. You can do what you want with them, and then sell them on when you’re tired of them.

A student from NYU is very confused by it all. He stands in front of us speechless and slightly shaking. He asks if we mind if he goes to the park to have a cigarette.

I hunker down with my laptop on a wobbly chair under the HBF tent - which serves as information centre, chill out room, bag depository, therapy pool, pizza bar, coffee station – and leaf through visitors’ comments. We already have thousands of sheets with names and email addresses. Here are a few…

“What began as a relatively benign experience quickly became very physically disturbing. Enormously effecting and simultaneously upsetting.”

“What am I supposed to do…?”

“Just what I needed to know. I’m not the only one…”

“I didn’t even know something like this existed. I feel ill.”

“A terrible truth. Everyone should know.”

“Of course I knew sex trafficking is bad, but I never knew how disgusting it is.”

“What these women go through is sickening. It made me very uncomfortable.”

“Overwhelmingly sad.”

“I had read about these atrocities in articles, but BEDROOM made me feel it.”

“I appreciate my privileged place outside of this horrifying, damaging world of cruelty, profit and deep malfunction.”

“This exhibition put flesh and substance, and story to the staggering and paralyzing statistics.”

“I was particularly sickened by the bureaucrat’s responses.”

“It made me feel so naïve. I was so surprised to see this happening in Western Europe.”

“Have never experienced anything as horrible as this. I wish I was more powerful and influential. To do anything that would enable me to stop this forever. It breaks my heart and we need to break the hearts of unaware people. You are my heroes for doing something about it.”

Constant stream of people coming to the tent. Dollar bills going into the buckets. T-shirts and newspapers spirited away. JOURNEY asserts itself on a location. It radiates a subliminal sense of brooding fury. The metal containers are saturated in the emotions of thousands of visitors. People tumbling out are like swimmers coming up for air. Then they become quietly internalised. They don’t really know what to do with it. We hope they become slow burning fuses that trigger small explosions.

 

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