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Video/Audio installation

by Maša Drndić

 

 

Constant movement has come to be the only certainty about my life in the past few years. It has been a while I have been trying to understand, often together with many others also on the move, why such intense mobility feels so immobilizing and restrictive. The inability to name, explicate, mourn the insecurity embedded in such mobility, has become ever more articulate while facing the largest failure of handling displacement in the recent history. In between Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Germany and Austria, I move among the places shaken by displacement, fear and courage, social conflicts and new solidarities. This project is exposing introspective reflections on entanglements and disentanglements of different movement trajectories. It is about the difficulties of locating the self or extending the self across the diverse forms of constructed borders of our belonging. 

 

Main storyline embedded in the sound is brought through the readings of 8 poems. The poems are chronologically presented drawing on specific emotional states as well as observations connected to various locations / countries that marked my life in the recent months (Croatia, Hungary, Germany, and Austria).

Texts suggest a feeling of constant turmoil of thoughts, reflections, impressions and fears, inspired by the experiences of living a temporary life, repeatedly building short term connections, homes and beings. The poems are therefore shaded in the contradictory emotions and questions about fragmented identities, belonging as well as one’s responsibility towards the current surrounding.

 

DISSONANCE

 

I will sweep the morning off my face

into my lap

it will fall like rain

In a moment or so

This March is ominous

The Mura is swelling

confined

In a lukewarm basin

 

The Pakistanis are playing cricket

On a muddy path;

I will make a collage

Cutting willows

birches

Zebras

Zig-zag

 

I am distant

 

I will erupt

Into deranged

laughter

into a howl

Into a soggy March

capricious and tricky

huddled

Dominantly

Dissonant

 

I am slicing

My fingers

The rims of my sleeves,

the palms of my hands

heedlessly

I cut and assemble

A home

A little house

a hut

A small box

that tinkles

like a matchbox

For happiness

For us.