I ended the lecture with a question to the audience. The voices I listened to for half a year exist because women recorded them back then. What are we recording now?

Everyone in the room received a form: Violence against women – Write down your experience. Have you experienced violence yourself? Or do you know the story of someone else: a mother, grandmother, sister, friend or neighbour? You could choose what to write, with your name or anonymously. At the bottom was the number of Veilig Thuis, the Dutch helpline for domestic violence, available day and night.

The completed forms went into an archive box. The box has been handed over to BHIC. Its contents remain closed and will only become public in fifty years. So a new archive begins, for whoever wants to know in fifty years what women in Brabant are going through now. Just as I read the stories of women from fifty years ago.