Chris Dyson | Transacting Emotion

The Onion Cellar is a fictional bar in Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum where patrons purchase onions, cut them, cry, and emote collectively in an attempt to self-manage the traumas of life and war. Chris Dyson identifies this mediation of emotion through shared rituals as a potential critical apparatus employed by both Grass and some times organizer Meghan Gordon. In this context, Dyson’s work carries these fictions into our contemporary situation and engages a collective understanding of emotion in our current socio-economic landscape.