ṵo°rǵ ~    ~    °  word  of     ~  

a bunch of boggy peaty grassy sloppy sedgy tongues

~ approx. 3% of the world’s uncontainable literature ~ 

Perhaps these tongues are reflected as sph sph sph agnum floating between lakes with x

-ozauria and are speculated upon by beings of the foren zic o                                  

o men    o        exēgētḗs

Jasmina Al-Qaisi articulates and performs known and unknown forms of language, alphabets and phonetics. In spring 2024, she will spend some days on the small island of Koos and the Karrendorf meadows to get to know the nature reserve area which is mostly characterized 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 will indulge into the sounds, smells, sponges and the “boggy, peaty, grassy, sloppy, sedgy tongues” of the largely uninhabited natural reserve. She asks: “Can one read, taste and be with a ṵo°rǵ?” She will be accompanied by the sound artist and ornithologist Ralf Wendt.

What interests her most about peatlands is the contrast between institutional and colloquial forms of speaking about these particular ecosystems. Besides her outdoor research, she will also meet various scientists, actors, and practitioners from Greifswald to learn about their way of talking and thinking about peatlands in greater depth. The result will be an audio work entitled ṵo°rǵ. Words of Peatlands (forthcoming). ṵo°rǵ or worg stands for a broken anagram shapedshifted by speech coming from words and peatlands. Her work is intended as an intervention into the language in which peatlands and their drainage are usually described. Open to mispronunciations and misunderstandings, she creates an imaginary language reconstruction aiming beyond measurements, taxonomies, re-interpreting myths, archaeological and cosmological notions.

The sound piece ṵo°rǵ. Words of Peatlands will be produced in the context of the international project art and research network project Sensing Peat, realized by the Michael Succow Foundation and funded by the Andrea von Braun Foundation. It will be launched on April 30, 2024 on the Sensing Peat website.

Cooperation partners: Koos Nature Conservation Station