In Practice: Horror & Healing

Marginalised communities have long had our stories and histories silenced, destroyed, denied and delegitimised. Yet amidst this cultural violence, people have resisted by creating underground, unfunded films and writing scripts that push boundaries, refusing to allow capitalism to rob us of an art form we deserve to take part in. “There has been a strategic disruption of narrative and memory” – Farzana Khan

The camera in and of itself is a site of reclamation and power. It is the surveillance in our streets: a weapon of the state. This is how we are able to so accurately and acutely understand the worldviews of marginalised peoples we might never have connected with.

The horror genre offers us an opportunity to explore such margins. Vampiric lore is often connected to queer experiences: those who are ‘othered’ due to their insatiable and innate desire. Werewolves are creatures who transform with nature’s lunar cycles, quite literally shedding their skin and releasing an inner self in a way that could be allegory to the trans experience. And throughout the genre, the demonisation of mental illness (alongside madness, neurodivergence, and disability) as inherently terrifying or violent.

This project hopes to subvert this by identifying society, and particularly the mental health industrial complex, as a site of horror. 

Horror and healing may seem paradoxical at the surface, but often are deeply intertwined. Experiences of horror are often an invitation towards healing, supporting us to reclaim fear and discomfort from systems of oppression and enable us to be emotionally resilient as we long for a better world. Building capacity for societal healing – including healing justice – means developing an understanding of our relationship to horror: our encounters with it, our reactions to it. 

Horror is an embodied genre, defined by your body’s physical reaction to the art you’re presented with. The expectation is that you are uneasy, tense, thrilled – you are expected to scream. It offers an opportunity for catharsis and release, whether our feelings are solely connected to the film or just the horrors in our day-to-day existence. We are able to root for a protagonist who is fighting for their life and we feel triumph when they succeed. This is in contrast to the common reality, where our revolutionary heroes have their stories cut abruptly short. Terror is both a daily reality and a narrative escape. When we can reclaim it, through our own bodies and our own stories, we can heal. This project will be an opportunity to explore our desires and longings for the future of the horror genre, and the future of healing justice.  

The project poses and aims to explore the following questions, recognising that In Practice seeks to “think out loud and unresolved”. 

• How can we root storytelling in the ancestral, communal, and collective?
  
• How can we interrogate experiences of horror within the mental health industrial complex? 
  
• How can we (re-)identify society as a site of horror? 
  
• How can film become an opportunity for simultaneous horror and healing? 

Every six months, HJL engages a new Editorial Steward to lead In Practice by developing, commissioning, and executing creative projects. 

Aiyana Goodfellow is HJL’s current Editorial Steward (May – October 2025). 

Aiyana is a multidisciplinary artist – whose work spans writing, music, theatre, and filmmaking – and a community organiser. 

They are the author of Radical Companionship: Rejecting Pethood & Embracing Our Multispecies World and INNOCENCE & CORRUPTION: An abolitionist understanding of youth oppression (both published before their 18th birthday!). 

Aiyana has founded many social justice projects, particularly those that focus on the liberation of nonhuman animals, children and young people, and neurodivergent people. Aiyana is co-founder and co-publisher at The Anima Print and founding executive director of NEUROMANCERS. 

aiyanagoodfellow.com | @aiyana.goodfellow