This April, you can make a difference.
Speak out – Break the silence –
Give voice to the voiceless – End abuse!

WALK UNAFRAID is an interactive public art project that brings awareness to sexual assault and dating violence. Your group can easily create this powerful crime scene installation that is recognized as an effective tool for empowering individuals to recognize and prevent abuse.

What’s in the box?
Everything you need to get the word out!

• License to create the WALK UNAFRAID crime scene
• Art Materials to create a full 6 x 8 foot installation
• Quick-Start Guide with full instructions
• Walk Unafraid T-Shirts for project leaders (2)
• Worldwide Membership Pass to Online Community
  
• Other surprises, resources, tips and goodies packed in every box!

Walk Unafraid Anti-Violence Awareness Kit $250.
(Everything needed for 12 participants)

FREE SHIPPING through April 15th!

(Within the Continental US)

ORDER YOUR KIT TODAY FOR APRIL DELIVERY!

WALK UNAFRAID CHELSEA, 2006

With the Walk Unafraid Anti-Violence Awareness Kits
you can:

• Raise public awareness
• Help victims of abuse
• Empower individuals to recognize and prevent abuse
• Heal survivors, families and perpetrators
• Build stronger, safer communities

Your purchase supports The Red Collaborative while empowering your community.  Thank you!

I brought along one of my Yoni Valentines to give to Eve

and had the opportunity to present it to her when we were

setting up in the Activist Lounge on Thursday.

It’s a wire, steel and encaustic sculpture from the

Yoni Valentine Series started in 2005.

People of the Gulf South affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: We want to know

WHAT MAKES YOU SEE RED?

From orgasmic joy to primordial angst – the City of New Orleans, as with Life itself, encompasses the extremes of human experience. Launched during the V-Day SUPERLOVE V TO THE TENTH Celebration in April 2008, Seeing Red: Voices of the Gulf South is a collaborative project that encourages the people of the Gulf South to express their feelings about the violence, loss, devastation and hardship they’ve experienced due to the storms as well as personal expressions of love, passion, courage, strength, joy and ecstasy.

Words and images created in red are being collected through July 31st and will be compiled into a book and traveling art exhibition that will tour nationally. The hundreds of works on paper created by participants of all ages and from all walks of life, answer the question: “What makes you see RED?”

If you’re interested in participating – or organizing a group to participate – in the project, please contact us by writing theredcollaborative[at]mac[dot]com. We’d love to have you on board!

Issue Project Room in Brooklyn presents Marc Zegans and Gabrielle Senza reading from Pillow Talk, their newly released book of erotic haiku and gestural drawings, sculpting and shaping the spoken work with the sounds of THE ECSTATIC ENSEMBLE. $10.
THE ECSTATIC ENSEMBLE
MV Carbon cello
Lucian Buscemi, Bass
Anthony Ptak, theremin
Zach Layton, guitar
Michael Evans, Percussion

8PM, ISSUE Project Room
{at The Old American Can Factory}
232 Third Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NEW YORK 11215
718 330 0313 tel
http://www.issueprojectroom.org for information

$2. from each sale will be donated to Red Collaborative! Order your copy from gspotpress here.

PILLOW TALK
A collaboration between artist Gabrielle Senza and poet Marc Zegans, Pillow Talk explores the human comedy through erotic haiku and graphite images drawn with sensitivity and light.

Senza and Zegans’ collaboration unfolds as a conversation between form and text playing out across the pages of a pillow book, an intimate
set of musings on eros expressed in raucous, tender, vulnerable human form.

Speaking different languages, male and female, line and word, sound and shape, Zegans and Senza turn in to each other, gently, allowing life to find its balance in the shared, quiet moments of pillow talk.

Artist-activist, Gabrielle Senza is internationally recognized as an environmental artist, social activist, educator, curator and writer. She exhibits widely and has work in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, Fidelity Investments, Paine Webber, and in private collections around the world. She has taught at Mass MoCA, Cooper Union and Bard College of Simon’s Rock. She is the founder and director of the creative public arts initiative, Red Collaborative.

Marc Zegans is a poet, playwright and author. His current work explores waking dreams and human fragility in the post-industrial landscape. Marc’s play, Mum and Shah, co-written with Colby Devitt, was a Boston Globe “Pick of the Week”.

His spoken word Album, “Night Work” was released by Philistine Records in August 2007. Erin Cressida Wilson, author of the films, “Secretary” and “Fur” describes “Night Work” as, “erotic and sad, a logue of girls: broken-hearted, cruel and grieving – a celebration of love and naughty women…”

g.spot press
Recently founded by Gabrielle Senza, g.spot press, publishes artist-designed books that combine poetry, fiction, and other creative musings with high quality artwork by contemporary artists. We specialize in bringing together some of today’s most original creators from a variety of genres, to publish original books of delectable quality and style.

To order Pillow Talk online, visit: gspotpress.com
For more information, write gspotpress[at]mac[dot]com

Dear Jen, Eve, Shael & Cecile –
Thank you – thank you – thank you!!!
V TO THE TENTH was amazing. Thank you for inviting Red Collaborative to participate in transforming the Superdome into SUPERLOVE. It was an honor to be a part of creating a safe, healing and inspiring environment for thousands of women and to network with so many incredible organizers and activists from around the world.

I’m happy to report our creative public art initiatives were well received and have generated positive feedback — and for some, cathartic transformation. The Collaborative Scroll: From Isolation to Community held a special place in the Healing Lounge, and received approximately 72 new entries from visitors, who shared their pain, hopes, grief and gratitude. It is both heartbreaking and motivating for me to read the entries on The Collaborative Scroll after each display as I upload them to our online version. As the scroll travels and grows, my commitment to breaking the silence surrounding abuse is stoked and I am aflame with fury and an unstoppable passion to make change by giving voice to those who are seldom heard.

Our second project, Seeing Red: Voices of the Gulf South was launched at our table in the Activist Lounge. New Orleans City Council President, Arnie Fielkow kicked off the project by donating the paper on which participants would share in words or pictures their response to the question: What Makes You See Red? We collected over 170 pieces in the two days we were at the Super Dome. The Seeing Red: Voices of the Gulf South project will be extended over the next few months, while we collect pieces from hundreds of school children and adults throughout the Gulf South with the help of several local volunteers. The hundreds of red works on paper created by Seeing Red participants will be incorporated into a book and traveling exhibition that will debut in New Orleans in the fall. It was a special privilege to have Dr. Denis Muskwege’s response: “What makes me see red? It is the destruction of women — The destruction of the life force. That makes me see red!”

In the Activist Lounge, we had the opportunity to meet hundreds of organizers from around the world and to learn about pressing issues that need real attention, such as the situation Dr. Muskwege so powerfully brought attention to – the torture, rape and mutilation of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I was sickened to learn that women are strategically being used as “weapons of mass destruction” in the Congolese war, and are considered “cheaper than bullets.” The source of the problem, we learned, is the protection and control of the earth’s minerals located in the region.

We have to ask ourselves: Are the minerals used for making cell phones and digital cameras more valuable than lives? Are we, the consumers, going to turn a blind eye to the decimation of lives (and indeed the planet), simply for the sake of personal convenience? The precedence set by our nation’s corporate and political leaders seems to encourage us to do just that. I am reminded how strong the spell of inertia and complacency is in this country – especially upon my return to the beautiful, affluent and peaceful Berkshires in Western Massachusetts. It is for this reason, I am so grateful we have people like Amy Goodman, Eve Ensler and other activists around the globe to help wake people up to reality.

I’m still processing all that happened during our visit to New Orleans and the impact it’s had on my sense of purpose. Prior to arriving in the city, I felt a strong pull, an urgent call for action, devotion and a mysterious connection to a city I’d never seen before. The City has captured my heart, and I know my work there is far from finished.

Thank you, all of you from V-Day, for creating an opening to connect to my higher good in ways I never knew possible – from holding space for people to safely share their pain and grief, to joyous serendipity experienced throughout the city at every turn, as we made connections with people in New Orleans.

The City, as in Life, encompasses extremes – from orgasmic joy to primordial angst, and everything in between. But the reality clinging to my heart, is the reality of lives lost and hopes destroyed, yet there remains a fierce will to go on. I am compelled to return to New Orleans and to devote my time to rebuilding the city alongside the thousands of volunteers from all over the world who have come to New Orleans to help build homes because the government is not taking care of it’s own people. There are thousands of New Orleanians that still don’t have homes to return to, nor the support of their government to bring them home. There’s a pattern emerging here in America, created by political and corporate entities, that I don’t want my name attached to. Fortunately, there are thousands of artists, activists, volunteers, journalists and bloggers reporting the truth, raising awareness, and demanding change. We have the power to turn the tide, to change the norm and to redeem this country – but it will take every one of us to do it.

Are we going to turn a blind eye, hide out heads in the sand?
Or are we – all who came to New Orleans to celebrate Eve Ensler’s worldwide movement to end violence against women and girls – going to carry on that commitment to make change in the world by breaking the silence, giving voice to the voiceless and empowering individuals around the globe to be the change they want to see? I, for one, am committed to this cause for life.

In peace and with gratitude to all, namasté.

Gabrielle Senza, Seeing Red in New Orleans
Artist, activist and founder of The Red Collaborative

After many an adventure on the road and in the air, the two Gabrielle’s land gracefully in the lap of Southern hospitality and warmth.  

 

Asia Rainey

“Artist-Activist coming to NOLA for V-Day. . . Need a place to stay!”

Since we were still a little short on funds for the trip, even youth-hostel lodgings were out of the question.  I checked in with anybody and everybody that I knew who had connections in New Orleans to try to find a place for us to stay.  At the 11^th hour I got a round-about invitation to our posting on Craigslist.  We were invited to stay with performance artist and NOLA Outreach coordinator, Asia Rainey, who would be leading an initiation ceremony of young girls at the V-day Super Dome event on Saturday morning.  I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect match!

When I first mentioned Red Collaborative was heading to New Orleans to my friend, Derek Gentile (journalist for the Berkshire Eagle) he insisted that I talk to our State Representative, William “Smitty” Pignatelli right off the bat.  Smitty, like Derek, shares a passion for baseball and doing the right thing.  

Derek accompanied Smitty and a team of volunteers to New Orleans in to rebuild the home of Stanley & Betty Stewart in the Lower Ninth Ward – one of the hardest hit – and most neglected – areas ravaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2006.  Click here to read the letter from Sen. Edward Kennedy published in The Congretional Record acknowledging Smitty’s dedication to helping rebuild New Orleans.

Smitty has made numerous trips to the crescent city and was instrumental in putting me in touch with several folks there, among them, another passionate baseball professional (and  former Executive Vice President of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints), New Orleans City Council President, Arnie Fielkow. 

In addition, Smitty gave me the names of a few local Berkshirites who have organized teams of volunteers to travel down to help rebuild the city.  All these folks helped prepare us for an amazing trip to New Orleans. 

Without this team of amazing players, our mission to bring Red Collaborative’s empowering initiatives to the devastated city might not have gotten off the ground.  I am forever grateful for their assistance.