Julia Novikova

Julia tells us that she just recently arrived in Nizhniy Novgorod and, although she never had this problem before, she feels that she has a hard time connecting with people here. She feels that this city is very cold. She feels very isolated with people constantly listening to headphones in the bus, and especially, when she has very strong feelings about something, she cannot connect. However often elderly people approach her and she wonders why this happens only with old people!! My presentation made her think of a video clip which describes a girl walking in the streets dragging her immensely big heart along. On the way to meet the man she loves people in the streets are all smiling, but when her love sees her with such a big heart, he gets so scared that he runs away. Julia feels that this clip describes her feelings very well and she adds that she has no images of her own and feels that she has a heart as big as the girl in the clip and nobody appreciates it. In the group later, as we readdress her issue, Andrei asks, why everybody else has to do all the work to connect! Also, during the whole evening, she barely ever opened her mouth and suddenly, when spoken to, so thaws and speaks in a very lively manner and very eloquently. So the group suggests that she should do a project in the streets of Nizhniy, in which SHE has to approach the people to learn to do the first step. As we ask her what she thinks the city needs, she says that the city needed a place where people can express their needs and wishes, that she would like to make a box made of mirrors, carry it around the streets as a whish fairy and invite people to write down their wishes and then drop them through a slot into the box. The box needs to be made of mirrors, as people will be confronted with their own faces, as they are dropping their wish into the box reminding them that in fact they themselves are the only ones who can really make their whishes come true. 

We are all completely stunned about this idea, which seems so positive, so pure and so poetic! This girl who just before confessed not having any of her own images!