Huu: "Wind is how I speak to this world."
VR Landscape: Digital Monument for Survivors of Gender-based Violence
Type
Year
Location
Artist
Designer
Client
VR Landscape: Digital Monument
2022–23
Linz, Austria
Smirna Kulenovic
Christina Zhang
Justice for Women
Huu: Wind is how I speak to this world is an immersive landscape developed in Unreal Engine based on interviews with 22 survivors of sexual violence during the conflicts in Bosnia and the genocide in Rwanda. HUU takes its name from the sound of blowing wind, as well as the exclamation of relief when one lets go of the heavy burden on their shoulders. The survivors were invited to talk about natural landscapes, and through these landscapes, their long journey to healing. In the VR world, their voices inhabit an archipelago of floating islands, where each ecosystem embodies the memory of a survivor. In this installation, there is no mention of the trauma itself, but all about how one lives, loves, finds hope and embraces their life after. We travel through these islands as a gust of wind, listening to the stories told by survivors and experiencing the landscape of their memories. We are the wind, the witness and the messenger that connects the survivors with the world.
