steel mill closures and subsequent economic collapse — people from whom everything had been taken — often exhibited their anger and acute fear of loss in interactions like this .
Fenlon says those people didn ’ t seem to talk about their experiences with other locals — there was something of a culture of silence , a desire to let old wounds alone — but they ’ d talk to her , an “ outsider .” She started collecting people ’ s stories about the steel era and bringing them back to the community through art like
Spoiled Heat . “ That became a door-opener to a lot of conversation for people ,” she says . “ Like , ‘ Now , because this art is here , we have an excuse to talk about this , where we couldn ’ t talk about it
before .’”
Her time in Pittsburgh got Fenlon thinking about the contrast between silence and speech as responses to painful situations . When she moved to Chicago in December 2010 and went to work in a suburban Apple store , she saw the same contrast play out in a different setting . “ Fear and lack of knowledge about their technology , plus fear of loss — of contacts , photos , voicemails — heightened customers ’ emotional responses ,” she explains . Apple employees were actually trained in de-escalation to assist people through difficult moments . In one extreme example , a customer came in with a gun as a tactic to get what he wanted . “ It comes back to silence and speaking ,” she says . “ And the question of why we turn to this particular tool when we ’ re in pain .”
In addition to the goal of “ breaking ” guns visually , Fenlon wanted ungun to break apart and re-envision the beliefs we hold about guns , whatever they are . “ The thing I want for America is for people to talk about guns so they can make good decisions ,” she says . “ My only politick is , ‘ Can we come to a space where mutual conversation is possible ?’”
Many people who see ungun do in fact react by talking about guns , most immediately with Fenlon herself . Over the years , she ’ s been told stories about dads buying kids their first gun and teaching them how to shoot , stories about muggings , stories about sexual assault , stories about self-defense , stories about why we need guns , and about why we don ’ t . A Bosnian War veteran told her that , if he had not been able to use a gun as a soldier , he would not have been able to help stop the genocide . A mother told her about struggling to teach her gun-crazy sons that these weapons aren ’ t toys .
Like the vast majority of her vocal viewers , regardless of their feelings about guns , these people told Fenlon to keep doing what she was doing .
“ Strangers seemed almost obsessed with encouraging me to keep making the art ,” she says . “ There was some kind of permission happening for them , so I respected their request .”
While Fenlon ’ s work tends to draw people out , there can be a flipside for those in the audience who have personally experienced gun trauma . In 2015 , UNLOADED was mounted at Northern Illinois University — a school that had
survived a mass shooting ten years earlier . “ At one point , I sculpted the soundtrack [ of ungun ] so it sounds like it ’ s strafing the room ,” Fenlon says . Some people who came to see it had been on campus during the 2005 shooting , and the sounds triggered a PTSD response in them . Fenlon suggested the curator turn it down . “ When you ’ re raising issues about life-threatening experiences your audience has endured and it re-traumatizes them , you have to respect their reaction ,” she says .
Fenlon is an intellectually driven person . She found that because technology-based art is still primarily maledominated , “ I was subverting my prescribed role as a woman to do this work . That doesn ’ t mean I forgot I ’ m a woman — other people remind me all the time !— but it wasn ’ t on the surface .” Though she doesn ’ t feel her own gender played a major role in the quintessence of ungun , Fenlon has noticed that gender matters when it comes to the reactions it receives .
Of the scores of stories she ’ s heard over the years , just a few of them have come from
female survivors of domestic gun violence ; the only story shared with her of rape involving a gun came from a male victim . Crime statistics have long shown that women suffer disproportionately more from the effects of gun violence — so why haven ’ t they been sharing their stories more ? “ There ’ s a double silence around guns for [ women ],” Fenlon says . “ It ’ s as though they not only have their voices silenced in those moments of abuse — they also feel they lose the right to say anything about it later .”
“ I ’ ve learned that the ‘ silence ’ reaction occurs around the more painful and more gendered experiences ,” she says . “ These weapons are so close to so much pain .”
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