STRANGE BODY

Published: ▷ Audio published by Urban Arts Berlin | Synthesis Vol. 1 - International Female Composers ░ November - 2014 ░ Publication link: urbanartsberlin.bandcamp.com/synthesis-vol-1
Exhibited: ▷ Croatian Association of Artists Institution - Galerija Bacva // 'Screen Present Tense' / Zagreb, Croatia / June 9 - 27, 2017

Medium: Performance - Sound - GIF
Year: 2015 - 2014

A feeling of foreignness has accompanied me throughout my life. Foreign body, foreign place. Foreignness is not only spatial and about migration, it is where one find that certain dissonance. You can feel foreign in your own body. You can struggle to find a sense of place inside yourself. I have talked to people about this and found unexpected connections. A transgender girl told me once, she first migrated gender inside her body and then she migrated country, she identified as a double migrant. I see there are different ways in which one might find oneself at odes with one’s body. I have felt I was placed in the wrong body. Not due to a social construct, but due to biology. My body aches every second, as if I were trying to break free from it. It holds me hostage; it often takes away my autonomy. I have felt my body as an enemy, completely dissonant with my self, with my mind, with my person. Inside me, I run at a fast speed, it runs always against my pace. I live in resistance inside of it. Sometimes I have fantasized to have the body of a cyborg; I dream of that technology; I reach for it in my mind; I long for it. I long for a body that feels like home.

[GIF]

[Performance audio]

[Performance text]

Strange body

A body made of fire.

A flowing river

I am one, my body is another

My body, belongs to whom?

Being stabbed with a million knives at the same time.

What is this?

Why is this happening?

Muscles rupturing in unison, joints decaying.

There are big iron balls rotating inside my muscles, tearing down my flesh, crushing my bones…the sensation of agony follows.

Solid, heavy balls, shiny and metallic.

I can feel them wounding my flesh and I want to scream but sound doesn’t come out. Sound takes too much energy. I am screaming a mute scream.

They are ripping out pieces of me. The balls cause wreckage inside my body and I start scooping them out with a spoon, one by one. They keep appearing as if they were reproducing and I keep scooping them out. I am silently crying and crying and crying and clenching my teeth, pursing my lips and my eyes are snapped shut.

I put my hands on my legs to control the violent movement of the balls and it becomes hell and there is no way out. Is horrible and grows in strength, in strength, stronger worse and worse. Burning, tearing, stabbing, ripping…
My flesh is all torn apart, my sheets are a bloody mess of and I am lying there,

with pieces of my flesh, skin and bones scattered around.
Let me float in the air, let me swim in the ground, let me fly in the water; let me escape from this prison.

I find myself finding my desire to find the strength to break the chains.

Walking, one step after the other, shackles; clang, clang, clang.

I float, fly, swim, cry and laugh.

Made of steel like the shackles

Elektra KB

STRANGE BODY