Have you ever thought, “I’m so angry I could scream?”
It’s almost a wish. Because most of us do not scream. That would signal a loss of control. Children scream because they’re still learning to manage their emotions. As adults, we’re expected to know better.
But maybe screaming in a setting that’s designed for it is just the thing we need. Not screaming at anyone. But instead, screaming in an environment surrounded by a supportive group of people who are encouraging you to use your vocal cords to express your feelings.
Chicago-based artist and photographer Whitney Bradshaw has organized screaming sessions — called Outcry — since 2018, specifically for women, non-binary and genderqueer people. At each session, she also photographs participants mid-scream, and those images have become part of an exhibit that she tours nationwide.
A documentary about the project called “Outcry: Alchemists of Rage” will screen locally at 5:30 p.m. March 1 at the Logan Square restaurant and performance space LouLou (details at outcryfilm.com).
“We’re doing something that’s potentially embarrassing, that’s looked down upon,” Bradshaw says in the film. “It’s like we’re completely hysterical if we have emotions. So I want to change that.”
There are different reasons a person might want to scream, whether they have been told to stay silent about abuse experienced as a child, or have been dismissed or ignored as an adult, or are struggling with a political landscape that has exacerbated feelings of fear, anger and frustration.
Don’t make waves. Don’t be difficult. Just let it go. That’s the message we often receive, whether it’s overt or more nuanced. Bradshaw aims to help people break through that conditioning. The resulting photographs, in her words, “look a lot like the most insane senior high school portraits.”
Outcry is not primal scream therapy. But the experience can be therapeutic. And perhaps a more useful way to channel big feelings than a more common outlet: Yelling at people on social media.
“Because I’m an artist, and I also used to be a social worker, I’m melding my social work interests with my visual art interests,” Bradshaw said in an interview. “So I’m using art to connect people who don’t know each other and have very different life experiences, different ages and different races.”
Bradshaw described Outcry as social practice art, which is a term for contemporary art that exists to create social change through an interaction between the artist and the audience.
“I personally had been feeling a lot of very intense rage for years,” said the film’s director, Clare Major. “And here’s this incredible experience and incredible art that takes rage — or grief, or frustration, or whatever it is for each individual person — and turns it into something powerful and unifying. … I wanted to explore why Whitney does her art and her activism, and I wanted to show the impact of scream sessions on participants.”
According to Bradshaw, everyone walks into an Outcry session nervous. “Even if you are totally fired up, it’s still a really hard thing to bring yourself to scream because we are so conditioned not to do it.”
The reality of our current moment can be terrifying and destabilizing. Outcry is meant as an antidote to those feelings of powerlessness. “Afterwards, people feel more connected,” said Bradshaw. “More understood. Less alone. They feel like they’ve developed a sense of community with people who they may not normally spend any time with.”
Which is why the experience leading up to the photographs “is maybe the more important part,” she said. “But the photographs themselves also become a collective act of resistance. It’s about people who have felt silenced who are emoting and sharing their experience.”
Bradshaw’s photos are the opposite of glamor shots; the images ask both subject and viewer to rethink the selfie phenomenon and the pressure to tweak images of ourselves in order to look conventionally attractive.
“The whole experience is uncomfortable,” Bradshaw said, “but it’s a safe space to be uncomfortable. It’s learning to let go of some of these things that we spend so much time worrying about. That is at the core of this project: How do we liberate ourselves? And the photographs are a big part of that because they challenge the way that we normally experience seeing pictures of women.”
Has anyone had second thoughts about the photographs afterward?
“Here’s what has happened: Some people immediately love them. Others don’t like them when they first see them, but then over time, they love them. People have bought their portraits and several have it framed and hanging in their house. A lot of people use them as their social media avatar.”
The screaming itself, Bradshaw said, is often the first step toward something else.
“We’re taught to be nice, we’re taught to be quiet. But there are also some physiological things that happen when you scream, which is one of the reasons why I chose it. If you choose to scream, and you’re not in a state of fight or flight, it can calm your nervous system. One of the greatest things that comes out of this project is that people have told me that it carries over into the rest of their life. Maybe they’re more likely to speak up at work when people are talking over them.”
Each Outcry session is a one-off event with different (and new) participants. But even so, Bradshaw says it creates a lasting feeling of support, and many of those who have met through Outcry have remained in contact with one another.
“That’s what’s so interesting about the project,” Bradshaw said. “One of the participants wrote to me and said, ‘I arrived, I was nervous and I didn’t know anyone, and by the end of the two hours, I felt like I would walk through fire for any one of the women in that space.”
