Jessica Pleyel: Standing To(get)her Against Guns
By Rebecca Olson
All morning, the women have been getting to know each other, painting their nails, eating breakfast. Soon, the destruction will begin.
A black wax assault rifle is brought out and set on a table, and the women choose their weapons: clothes iron, hair straightener, waffle maker, high-heeled shoe. They each have their moment with the tool and with the gun. Pounding and pressing, they watch it disintegrate with heat and pressure, until the only thing that remains is a black slickness. A memory of a violence, past.
This interactive art experience is the brainchild of Midwestern-based performance artist Jessica Pleyel, who calls this a meeting/melting/mending. The gatherings fall into the universe of Pleyel’s To(get)her project, a collaborative performance art piece in which women from a variety of backgrounds use commonplace domestic objects to dismantle wax guns through cathartic acts of destruction.
To(get)her seeks to create an empowering experience for its participants, while simultaneously raising awareness about gun violence against women. The project’s clever name communicates this sense of unity and understanding — while also alluding to the threat of danger.
“One meaning of To(get)her is the reality of violence against women. In this case, to be caught or held in a non-consensual way. This is a constant fear and an unfortunate lived reality for many women, including those who have been a part of the project,” explains Pleyel.
“Another meaning of the title is the act of understanding each other — to ‘get’ someone,” she continues. “Through this project, we are all gaining a fuller picture of each other and can create community based on a foundation of that shared understanding.”
Since the first meeting/melting/mending, there have been six iterations of To(get)her which have taken place in Iowa City, Iowa and Tacoma, Washington. How the project works and what it looks like changes from iteration to iteration, though the central themes of each performance — catharsis, collaboration, and connection — remain the same.
Pleyel believes that in everyday life, women are often not given a safe container for anger. Being able to let out aggression, sadness, and frustration on an inanimate object, she says, can be a helpful means of catharsis. The project is not intended to take the place of other means of trauma care, but rather, to create a safe place to confront anger, hurt, and sadness.
The idea for this project came out of Pleyel’s personal experiences as a survivor of domestic abuse and sexual violence. She found that she was able to connect with other women about her experiences whenever she shared that part of her story through art, and wanted other women to have the same opportunity.
