~ ~ ° word of ~ ° ~ ~ by Jasmina Al-Qaisi
a bunch of boggy peaty grassy sloppy sedgy tongues keep the well-preserved information paradoxically distorted through different readings over time. When trying to be deciphered, these tongues bubble language that eventually decays into communication unintelligible to human ears, bodies and embodiment. Can we read, taste, write and be with a bog? Maybe mirroring as sph sph sph agnum floating between lakes, these tongues come and go with migratory x-ozauria and are speculated upon by beings of the forensic o
omen
o exēgētḗs.
Author/Artist/s:
Format:
Sound piece
Research method:
approx. 80 hours on the island of Koos
Time:
Spring 2024
With a starting question “Can one read, taste and be with ° ~ ?” and her interest in body-learning about peatlands and the various contrasts between institutional and colloquial forms of speaking about these particular ecosystems, Jasmina leavesthe island „looking for peatland everywhere“. Besides her outdoor research, she talks with various scientists and practitioners to learn about their approach to peatland in their research and practices. She then quotes them in the audio work. Her initial intention is to intervene into language and morph it into a fantasy of a Drosera gas releasing the possibility of peatland as an ecosystem to have a pronoun of ° ~ own.
Legend: the possible pronoun given to the bogdy of peatland is graphically illustrated by an association and repetition of these two symbols ° ~ alternated with spaces
This proposal comes as a result of imagining peatlands to have a sort of ecosystemhood which would possibly be in support of shaking our relationship with peatland from a pluri-perspective.
With bipedal instructions
I seek to crawl beyond language
Who said I can hear the water?
The sonic imagery in the audio work is drawn from recordings of the island Koos, some made with hydrophones, omni-directional and as well contact microphones. The use of the medium of the audio together with the writing are interrelational in the practice of the poet, giving a time stretch impression over the thinking-sensing process. Plus, Jasmina is permanently looking for rhythm beyond meaning.
Uuuuuwuuuu
Don’t squeeze the Sphagnum Moss
And let’s not be symbolic
dry you dry me
it’s factual
A fractural friendship
This piece of literature is an ongoing process, a never finished work of deconstructing the violences of power structures perpetuated on and through various bodies, and perpetual labour in reimagining with care their possible futures.
I left with a bog in a bottle asking the mud what is my mission.
I look for you in every swamp, as if you’re one but I avoid extensively
to demystify your body of time
my body rhyme
appealing to us all it speaks
the urgency
The rhyme
The rhyme
Jasmina Al-Qaisi articulates and performs known and unknown forms of language, alphabets and phonetics. In spring 2024, Jasmina spendsa few days on the small island of Koos and the Karrendorf meadows to get to know the nature reserve area which is mostly characterised by coastal flooding marshes. Shortly before the birds’ spring migration and breeding seasons will start, for instance for brood parasitic avocets, the flickering lapwing or the gender fluid ruff, the poet indulges into the sounds, smells, sponges of the largely uninhabited natural reserve.
Credits:
A work commissioned by the art and research platform Sensing Peat at the Michael Succow Foundation for the Protection of Nature, partner in the Greifswald Mire Center.
Sensing Peat is funded by the Andrea von Braun Foundaion.
Research trip on Koos Island, reflection time Făgăraș mountains
