Willemijn created this beautiful animation about struggling with keeping eye contact as someone who stutters.
“The past months, I noticed that however weird something is, it can become normal if enough people do it. We got used to wearing mouth masks and social distancing. I asked myself the question: what would I want to become normal? And I thought that I would like to get used to the way in which some people react to my stuttering.
When I stutter, I avoid eyecontact with people because I’m afraid of their response. Every change in facial expression makes me tense. In my video I animated the responses that I don’t want to see, with audio of my stuttering. By taking a closer look at the stutters and the responses, and by looking at things that I don’t want to see, I want to make it more normal for myself. To get used to it.”
Read the article on VPRO (in Dutch) here.
