A film by Sarah Small and Wade McCullum
This presentation and discussion is a collaboration of The Artist Study Group for People in the Arts at WAWI and the Sexual Abuse Study Group & Service.
Currently in pre-release, the new feature-length film concerns sexual trauma. The two study groups have planned the presentation and two discussions which will take place virtually on Zoom, over two dates:
Thursday, April 6, 2023 from 1:30-3:00pm/Eastern and Thursday, April 20th.
You must RSVP to receive the Private Preview screening film link. Email fvdillon@gmail.com
ABOUT THE EVENTS
Sarah Small and Wade McCollum will discuss their feature film, Secondary Dominance, as a hybrid biographical expression/auto-fiction documentary/long-form music video that explores trauma’s cellular imprint from a place where art and science intersect. In the film, a neuroscientist invites an artist to speak at a medical conference on PTSD, trauma, and the brain. During her talk, she reads a letter she wrote to her childhood sexual abuser, igniting a dance-and-music-centric journey into her psychological landscape, illustrating the nonlinearity of memory and transformation. A central topic of this discussion will include the complexity of being an Artist-Survivor and the challenges of representing cognitive, emotional and sensory experiences relating to trauma through the sound and visual artistic medium of film.
Study Group participants should view the film in advance of the April 6rh meeting. Please RSVP the email address above to receive the Private-Workshop-Preview screening link to view the film.
The second discussion meeting for this film will be hosted by the Sexual Abuse Study Group and Service on Thursday, April 20th. During this meeting we will expand further on our discussion of sexual abuse trauma and its representation through the performance and sensory experiences evoked by this film.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Sarah Small is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, performer, filmmaker, and photographer. She comes from a family of writers, psychoanalysts, a lutenist / composer mother, and a pianist / composer father. Small spent her childhood playing cello, concocting gibberish languages, dancing, and performing in musicals written by her mother. She became enraptured by photography when she was 13 yo, and in 2001 graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a BA in photography. Small’s Balkan vocal trio, Black Sea Hotel has toured and taught throughout the US and Scandinavia.
Wade McCollum is a Broadway, West End and TV actor, filmmaker, singer, composer, writer, director, inventor, and is co-founder of Neural Positive, a neuroscience tech company. McCollum used the almost 2 year break in live performance (2019-2020) to pursue a graduate degree in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. Be it in theater, on screen, in boardrooms, classrooms, or laboratories, McCollum’s life breathes with the interplay of art and science.
This event has been arranged by Frances V. Dillon, MSW, and Eric Dammann, PhD, Artist Study Group Co-Directors.
