Vana Knez [1981] HR
Biography
When I am born I am happy to be alive
When I am nine months old my uncle saves my life and loses his own life
When I am two years old, my alcoholic father regularly ill-treats my mother, who is constantly accusing
At the age of three my parents get divorced and I am tormented by my mother’s lover
When I am six, my father hits my mother so hard she ends up in hospital and I am glad that my parents are back together and that we move to the family’s countryside commune
When I am nine we move to the city and I hit the boys who tease me at school
At the age of ten I identify with the love-story of Christiane F
When I am eleven my drunken father says that I am to blame for my uncle’s death
At the age of twelve I drink and smoke dope
When I am thirteen, the boy I look up to rapes me
At the age of fourteen I am happy and doing well at school by using heroin
At the age of fifteen I am in love with a man who is eighteen years older and we each keep our drug addiction a secret from the other
When I am sixteen my parents report me to the police and forbid me to go on with the relationship
At the age of seventeen I am in a depression and deal heroin to provide for my own habit
At the age of nineteen my father reports me to the police and I am sent to prison
At the age of twenty-one I am released and start dealing drugs on a large scale
At the age of twenty-one I meet my husband and introduce him to the drugs scene
At the age of twenty-three I hope that the beneficial effects of the shaman plant Ibogaine will help me to have a child while being free from drugs
When I am twenty-five my daughter is born and my husband is imprisoned
From the time that I am twenty-five, my single father supports me in my drug dealing and I provide him with money to live on
When I am twenty-six my father claims part of the responsibility for my possession of drugs, as a result of which my sentence is reduced
At the age of twenty-seven I am clean and live from one day to the next
From a dialogue with the participant and with the aid of the matrix a biography of basic facts is developed, which portrays the person’s life as a sequence of events and decisions, of acts and reactions.
The texts of the biographies are spoken by the participants themselves, and recorded for the audio modules of the Baby Dolls and the project’s audio archive.