You Are Here – peer to peer survivor writing – is Jet’s second survivor writer’s platform; building on the first: Playing With Fire which took place in 2021. You Are Here offers an expanded series of workshops, a survivor writer’s group, via Spread The Word, and a series of interviews for the Wellcome Collection archives.
In this self-interview for You Are Here, Jet Moon talks about their journey into Survivor Writing and why it matters.
Listen along as you read
“I was in this jangling space, where I could hardly think. You know, couldn’t form coherent thoughts or sentences; I was often recycling images, in this flashback space once again. And often when I’ve been in these really awful spaces, there’s been a lot of times when I’ve thought, ‘Oh, you know, is this the end?’ Or ‘I’m completely fucked, what can I do from this space?’ That what I’ll do is, I will try and force myself to make something. You know, because at the end of the day – then at least you have made something – you get left with something. Rather than sitting in this space of nothing, where you’re eating yourself, your trauma is eating you. ”
“Find your cheerleaders, find the people who are
going to support you in having a voice…
This (Survivor) Writers Group: it’s just such an
amazing thing, to be celebrated by other people.
I think that is incredibly important to find those
spaces where your most tremulous voice can have its beginnings.
To do it alone is one thing; to do it with other people
– giving you that swell of listening approval –
is something else. So find your cheerleaders, find
your little group of people that you can be
together with.”
Listen and read the full interview here
About the artist
Jet Moon is a multi-disciplinary artist who writes, performs and collaborates on fierce work for radical social change. Collaborating for many years with the LGBTIQ, kink, sex worker, disability and survivor communities they belong to, dedicated to creating intimate spaces of sharing, visibility and resistance.
In 2021 Jet launched their peer – to – peer survivor writers project ‘Playing With Fire’ and completed ‘Peachy,’ a novella based on Jet’s teen experiences.
‘You Are Here’ expands Jet’s survivor writer’s platform; including interviews and a collaboration with Wellcome Collection. Jet has recently completed their novel ‘Artists Are Demons’: a glittering time capsule of a queer city. Dealing with themes of friendship, collectivism, grief, displacement and migration. It explores the collapse of idealism and what happens next. Based on Jet’s time in Sydney, Australia as part of the Anarchist left in the early 2000s.
Jet lives in London. You can find Jet on Instagram and Facebook.