Hey sweetie..!

You won’t believe what I’m about to tell you…
Let me guide you through broken narratives, unstable images and intimate gestures. As you enter the realm of soft murmurs, powerful trouble begins to unfold. Here, where illicit knowledge travels between lips. Morphed by each tongue, it becomes something that holds us together. A fragile chain, passed on and created by hidden and collective effort.

Shhh…
This gossip can save you.

Powerful Trouble.
Brushed aside, written off as trivial, feminine, and unprofessional, gossip has always been a vital mode of transmitting knowledge, signalling danger and building solidarity. Sharing what cannot be spoken aloud, forming female* alliances, finding resources to counteract male dominance. Our whispers may relentlessly disrupt male reputation and supremacy.

I’m not allowed to tell you this but… (come closer as I whisper into your ear). We drift on the borderline of what is embraced and what is denied. Spreading myths around this city. Watch precious rumours circulate.

As a source of social bonding and empowerment, gossip has long been a vital resource for groups that have limited or no access to the public sphere. In colonial contexts, the colonisers generally didn’t speak the language of the colonised. Here, hidden talk could maintain community cohesion in the face of oppression through the network of gossip[1]. And this reliance largely goes for all disempowered minorities: they build through gossip, creating alternative cultures. Tools of resistance.

Don’t be scared. Sleeping with your windows open and your doors unlocked.
You embody the missing piece. As my name passes through you. I know it does.
I breathe secrets into your ear. Creeping in warmly. The experience is both physical sensation and social intercourse. I keep your name in my mouth. I chew on it, I spit it out, now suck it back in. This gossip can save you.

So I keep whispering…

Text by Emma Schunack

[1] Mladen Dolar, Gossip, 2024.