change to be exhilarating andmotivating for next steps for more equitable social policies. Themass movement for justice and equity is conveyed through the visual image of thesemassive gatherings. My original idea for The Protest and The Recuperation was to consider recuperation from the perspective of the individual whoworks tirelessly for good through a life of resistance, action, and future visioning. In some ways, I created a fictional character to inhabit the world of protest. This person spends nights planning and preparing for the next round of street protests with sign in hand, water bottle in hand, hat on head, and comfortable shoes like millions showing up on the streets of cities and country roads around the world tomake public their discontent. I imagined a personwould need to recuperate, to be able to take a break, slowdown, and reboot. But the concept of recuperation, is, of course, much larger than one person’s need to regenerate energy and thought. Within protests, there aremany ways that people take care of one another in forms of collective caring such as themultiple services that were provided during OccupyWall Street—fromhealth care and libraries to food distribution and childcare. These acts alignwith the associative recuperation of the rights that have been denied amid the struggle that requires a taking back of what has been taken away. The Protest and The Recuperation acknowledges the relationship between taking action and taking care as a complex web of interconnected physical and psychological states. I sought to incorporate and validate recovery as an
19 Betti -Sue Hertz
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