THE RED STORIES
Creating narratives about menstrual experiences
The act of menstruation resonates.
We bleed while we study, we bleed while we work, we bleed while we laugh or cry, we bleed at very different times in our lives. Menstrual blood sometimes comes out of our bodies from the age of twelve, sometimes from the age of nine or seventeen. This is different for everyone. Through the constant repetition of this process, we become experts on our menstruation. We recognize the physical sensations that anticipate the arrival of the blood and we know the feelings that anticipate or come with this bodily function.
Workshop 5, Digital Illustration (2021) – Illustration: Susana Vásquez Torres – Animation: Cristian Catalán Arangua
Womb, Illustration (2021) – Illustration: Workshop Participant – Animation: Cristian Catalán Arangua
The Red Stories is an animated documentary whose central themes are the experience of menstruation and the construction of narratives based on personal experiences and exchanges with other women and menstruating people. The Red Stories is also an artistic archive that collects and organizes the information and knowledge created by the project participants in a narrative, symbolic and sensorial way.
The project aims to create safe spaces to talk, share and reflect freely about menstruation. It also aims to create information and narratives that come from our own life experiences and that empower our bodies and our stories. Another objective of this project is to organize and document these reflections so that they become part of the new history we are writing in the struggle against patriarchal oppression and violence. The established patriarchal power structure in which we live has produced much misinformation. They have also perpetuated ignorance and taboos on the subject, which are reflected in different ways in the societies in which the participants have lived, but are always present. For this reason, there is an urgent need to continue to develop ideas that break down and challenge the relations of power and domination over our bodies.
Womb, Illustration (2021) – Illustration: Workshop Participant – Animation: Cristian Catalán Arangua
Womb, Illustration (2021) – Illustration: Workshop Participant – Animation: Cristian Catalán Arangua
The heart of this project are the workshops with groups that have experienced menstruation on their own body. These workshops were a place for sharing and collective learning or unlearning. During this time, ideas and memories were shared. They also reflected on how our relationship to menstruation has changed over time and what narratives exist about it. These sessions also included visual, physical, and musical representations of ideas and emotions, both individually and as a group. The documentary The Red Stories brings together some of the material created in these spaces and the material created through experimental animation.