Scream Now
Inspired by the French Medieval “crieur public”, ScreamNow is a public screaming booth. The artwork takes a fundamental yet repressed human expression to generate digital visuals seen inside or outside of the booth.
Different iterations of the project have been presented on Governors Island, NY from 2020 to 2023.
ScreamNow : Inside/Out evolved to reflect the social distancing and deeply transformative of the COVID times. The set up expanded in space with a studio, adding the concept of Inside/Out to the project’s original purpose of offering a sanctuary for people to scream their heart out.
The screams from inside each of us are released outside in nature, shielded by the open booth structure. Recorded via a microphone in the booth, the screams are processed inside of the studio. Flower petals picked from the outside world are covering the walls of the studio where the recorded screams are transformed into visuals and projected back outside onto the booth.
The screamer instantly sees the visuals empowering her voice.
Pictures: Sample screamers using the booth on Governors Island during my residencies with Harvestworks in 2020-2021.
Sample screamer using the booth on Governors Island, Building 10A, Noland Park, 2020
Sample screamer using the booth, scream visualization projected on the roof, 2020
Sample screamer, scream visualization on small monitor, 2020
Scream visualization using Max 8, 2020
Sample screamers, 2020
After her visit, writer Beth Levine wrote this review on her experience with the screaming booth:
Valérie shared with me her idea of a Screaming Booth long before the pandemic struck. That it came to fruition at a time when we were all living in fear and isolation, a collective scream hovering somewhere between our throats and our masks, makes the installation all the more prescient and intuitive, the salve we didn’t know we needed.
I experienced the booth toward the end of October, on an unseasonably warm day. It’s an inviting structure, tall and open, but for all its airiness, there’s a privacy to it too: a place designated just for me. I was eager to step in and await my cue, but as I gripped the mic, my mouth refused to open.
The act of screaming, I learned, is surprisingly intimate. We scream on instinct, when we’re startled or scared, but to scream as release felt like a surrender, an invitation to witness my most private emotions, anger, frustration, grief. Should you, too, find yourself frozen, unable to let go, here’s my advice: Close your eyes. Summon all the thoughts you’re inclined to suppress, what exhausts you, challenges you, terrorizes you, follows you around like a menacing shadow. The sheer force of my scream brought me to a crouch, and when I rose, tears erupted, a cathartic volcano so electric, I screamed again.
Afterward, Valerie sent me a color-coded visualization, neon rays of orange, fuchsia, green and blue, powered by my fury. They rose to the heavens, then gently sloped down, a return to this world. Were my screams as anguish-fueled as Munch’s subject? Were they as primal and unfettered as Yoko Ono’s? I cannot say, but I do know this: they were wholly mine, and when I set them free, I set a piece of myself free, too.