Not a response to the strike, but a response to the (non)response of the strike

Performer: Eryn Peritz '25

Artist's statement: I want to respond to the "how can we progress with the strike in mind," the not yet-ness of this. Navigating the ethical implications of creating a performance within a school sanctioned event, my own frustration and anger of being a student of color at Bryn Mawr, and the feeling that I am attempting to tackle something so much larger than me, I am unsure of how to proceed; I am unsure of how to move, whether I should move and create performance art. Yet, my force is something I feel in the bones, it is something that my body sublimates into. I was not part of the strike, yet the after effects of the strike do inextricably involve me as a current Bryn Mawr student. I am frustrated that for the majority of the ‘25 incoming class, we were not informed about the strike and even now, the administration refuses to inform us about the strike. For so many of the upperclassmen, it seems that the strike is simply a fact, ‘this or that’ happened in a time called ‘during the strike.’ Yet, as a new Bryn Mawr student the strike is not a fact, it is not an experience that I lived. I do not speak for the students who experienced the strike, but for myself; I speak for myself, no longer an incoming student, but instead as an actual, existing student at this institution, which I do plan to spend my next 4 years at. I will acknowledge the setting itself as this performance will be held in the Great Hall of Old Library, which as it is well known, was formerly known as “M. Carey Thomas Library.” My mindset which I enter the performance with will be the mindset of “no illusions that she can change the political situation, or make people care about atrocities that seem very far away. But she does everything in her power to make the situation known in the most powerful way possible” (Diana Taylor, 125).