PROJECTS / 5 VOICES FOR 1

“BILOURA is an international performance company that operates worldwide: with creativity, dance, songs and lots of fun it helps women victim of trafficking and violence to take up their voice and communicate through art by expressing themselves through creative languages. In Austria too, the power-women of BILOURA are working with the support of FOOTPRINT and LEFÖ IBF, in order to improve the women's life quality by strengthening their self-perception and identity.”

NGO FOOTPRINT Wien, 2018

5 VOICES FOR 1 is a long term project started in 2017, which artistically explores the possibilities of creating echoes around the phenomenon of exploitation of women within the sex industry. The title "5 VOICES FOR 1" symbolises the utopian hope that for every marginalised voice that remains unheard, 5 others would rise and echo, in order to give voice to a global phenomenon that stays in the shade. It is an artistic project that aims to study, investigate, raise awareness and ignite debate on issues related to sexual exploitation of women in the world; it does so through various collaborations with NGOs, prostitutes and activists and with artistic actions of various kinds.

To date, the project includes 4 actions:

•  UNHEARD VOICES - A series of creative workshops in different countries, directed to women who have been working in the sex industry, held in collaboration with international NGOs dealing with the support and reintegration of marginalised women.

•  ECHO - An audio-performance installation that gives a stage to voices of marginalized former sex workers, made to be installed in public places, in order to make possible for a larger public to meet a reality that is apparently very distant, but which actually is a widespread global phenomenon.

•  FLESH - A dance solo, sound and visual performance that explores the abuse of women's bodies within the global sex market.

• SILENT VOICES - A visual soundart dance performance, a collective creation from 6 artists from different cultural and stylistic backgrounds, who have been approaching the topic from the condition of women within the sex industry in their own countries of origin. Produced between 2021 and 2022 at the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, South Korea.

The original idea of 5 VOICES FOR 1 was born in Italy, while BILOURA was leading the theatre workshop ODI with Nigerian asylum seekers in 2015. Working with asylum seekers made clear how heavily unheard certain voices remain, as migrants are exploited at all latitudes and their voices are silenced by the system of exploitation. In the course of ODI project, BILOURA also had the opportunity to come into contact with women who had been trafficked into prostitution. This had a strong impact on the artists of the Collective. Thus was born the desire to spread their voices, to listen to what they have to say, also to overcome the stigma that often accompanies them.

By using the performing arts as a bridge in favour of dialogue between diversities, 5 VOICES FOR 1 thus raises public awareness of the reality of sexual exploitation of women, which is as tragic as it is - indeed - unheard of, despite the fact that sex work constitutes the third largest market in the world after weapons and drugs.

ECHO