The Red Room

There is an old way of thinking about fear. As I was taught, “Fear traps our energy with our threads of story and twists them into a knot. If we can loosen the threads of story, loosen their hold on us, we begin to release the knot and free the trapped energy”.

The Red Room was designed to be a place to come and free yourself from fear - to untie the knots - and regain access to lost energy. Over 400 people came in small groups to the Red Room where they pondered fear and participated in a ritual to untie those trapped energies. Visitors were invited to make a small bundle of tobacco - a representation of their fear - and asked to tie knots around the bundle. With each knot, they called to mind a fear they carried. As they tied a knot outside of their body, an inner knot was released. Their final action was to leave behind the newly created fear bundle in the Red Room as an effigy of what they were leaving behind. Beyond the main ritual, groups practiced “scry” sessions seeking visions about the future, individuals sought healings through private rituals and small group trance meditations were supported by live performance.

The Red Room was conceived as a new kind of sacred space based on old ideas. The shape, round with tall walls and a disappearing door gave the feeling of being down in a kiva, with no obvious way out we are encouraged by the shape to go inward. The building materials used referenced many sweat lodges built of willow boughs with an outer covering of blankets. I have heard elders say that sweat lodges use blankets as a covering because they remind us we are being held by Mother Earth. Together, these elements created a unique indoor sacred space where all who visited were deeply held and invited to go within.

The Red Room opened in 2016 shortly before the presidential election. It quickly became a place for many in my community to land and to transform heightened fears of the future.

Photo documentation of the Red Room was done in collaboration with my long time collaborator Adrain Chesser.