Raumdeuter Radio: Göteborg
X
(SE)
We start in an image of ochre and deep turquoise. Eyes, pale
against tanned skin – wet, as if they’re just about to flood.
We pan horizontally, from left to right. This means nothing. Some
plateaus are stacked on top of the horizon and we dwell on the
mirage, as if to be reminded of something, as if to underline that
we’re now limited to fiction. Or the opposite, that it’s out of
reach to us and that we are unable to devote ourselves to the
imaginary. Drops from the silo hit a piece of tin, the sound is
clear and rhythmic. Their dial. Then he reaches for the revolver,
puts the palm of his hand on top of the brass covered grip – a
dirty finger on the trigger, shaking. An arm leans to a hip – a
shoe of brown leather, slightly buried in the sand, set. And those
of us who are watching, know – everyone knows, that before the
cigarette burns out – there’ll be a sound – of the signal.
(EN)
Midnight. Seventeen words on page one hundred and twenty seven,
‘A breath of life ́ published after her death, in nineteen seventy
seven “I know one thing: I am not my name. My name belongs to
those who call me”.
(AR)
Its a cruelty to write about a human being as if they were a wild
tulip. A miniature hell of separation and definitions, saying
little about birth, the state of being or death.
(SE)
Tulipa Sylvestris; reduced to everything except its inherent
potential. Recognisable by its color, its height and its
surrounding grounds, but never for its thoughts of the sky or the
ever present anxiety of being crushed. Not respected for it’s
patience and all of those days of waiting, deep inside the dark
soil.
(EN)
I believe sometimes, the act of naming is confused with that of
creation – as if our name would somehow – cause our existence –
and as if the word we ‘call out’ animates life, in its referred
‘being’. That language makes the world appear and not the other
way around. In a sense I think that’s what she’s getting at, that
her name circulates around her, without actually being her, that
she can’t be reduced to that.
(AR)
The Tulip crossbreeds easily, it has been refined and hybridised
in botanical labs – grown and changed color under the human
scalpel. It has served as a political symbol. A red and white
Semper Augustus, can make a whole economy fall. The tulip, is much
more than its name.
(SE)
In November, 1974, beneath the Ethiopian sun, an American Paleo-
anthropologist and his assistant, discover a series of white bones
in the sand. A skull, femurs and a pelvic bone from a ‘female’ –
supposedly moving upright, which automatically recategorises her
as ‘woman’ and consequently the, up to that point, earliest
example of what we define as human. AL 288-1, is given the name
Lucy the following night, after Beatles ‘Lucy in the sky with
diamonds’, rumoured to have been playing on repeat, during the
work teams celebrations. And, as in 2008, when sent to space in
direction of the pole star, Beatles were made representatives of
our species.
(EN)
Organising the mind and thought, language also restricts us
somehow, and, I’ve thought about how the word ́Parole ́ as well as
‘Sentence’ are components of the lingual, but they also appear in
law and courtrooms, like in ‘released on Parole’ or to ‘sentence
someone’ when articulating the verdict..and I just find it
interesting that the basic features of language connects with
justice or righteousness – – also underlining, perhaps, that
language is our ultimate judge – and that the non-lingual or non-
verbal in such case, would reflect the outlaw or aberration of
civilised life. Making the foreign language, what exactly?
(AR)
There is an observatory out here, with parabolic plates, gold
extracted from the heart of a mountain, but by the white mans
hand, now leading our gaze away from humanity. Directed towards
the perforated dark cloak, signals echo eternally – in a space
that, he claims, appeared out of nowhere and without any ‘God’.
The cowboy contaminates any secret and myth with his acclaimed
‘wisdom’ – conquering nothing but the wind in this wasteland, he
gives every star its own name, as if he was the first to ever
have them witnessed. A pure insanity.
(EN)
Each dawn, the cowboy reenters the world, having been away over
night – dwelling on the other side in sleep, in thought or
delirium. When the sun returns, he gets dressed for wherever
expected or for made up duties. Leaving the secret conversation
and that which belongs to the night behind, to be with his horse
in the wide, open canyon.
(SE)
Dawn. 47 words on page 176, Deliria, 2009. “The sun was, although
fogbound, present, and calmed by the bees consumed hours at the
bottom of my clock, I went out to live, love and explore, to
locate the responsible, make the guilty accountable och inform
them of the dead ones hunger.
(AR)
Outside of our kitchen, there used to be an orange tree, reaching
all the way up to the window. In the morning the whole room would
be filled with a sweet smell. I remember that day, as we passed it
by on our way out through the garden. The open fruits on the
ground, that our eyes were fixed to, in our bended postures. They
were not ripe; but pale and unready – in pieces all over, mixed
with bits of concrete and dust. I remember thinking they resembled
us, torn from the branch and how can I possibly carry this?
Not being ready for farewells.
(EN)
Between origin and futurism lies, the mutation. The deviation
caught in between forms. Skin that’s been bleached by an absent
sun, the growing of new bones or a disappearing vision – I think
we’re made of reality and fiction, equally, in the sense that
there is no means of navigation; between what’s felt and what’s
thought. Like inscriptions that continuously go through
translations, a mother tongue distorted by exile and modern
language.
(SE)
The paper is in an off-white, showing a circle, in different warm,
grey nuances, and a dark ring at the centre, with black fields in
its top and bottom. The middle is brighter and not entirely
circular, but with a slight oval diamond shape, like an open mouth
with its lips swelling towards top and bottom. The core is a white
bullet, making the whole thing resemble a vinyl. Beams of black
lens-shaped spots spread in a vivid X and you get a feeling of
seeing something from above. The image has been described as one
of history’s most important photographies and is the first visual
of a double helix, dna strands, captured by Rosalind Franklin.
(AR)
Close the windows. Cover the blinds dear. Put those eyelids at
rest. There are so many things we do not know. That we are not
supposed to now, cause they’re secret. Its still early in the
morning and we are not supposed to know about the day. Not meant
to see yet. What comes our way, will be clear once we cross paths.
There’s so much controlling, you keep holding all these things
together. Repairing and protecting. What do you achieve from
looking at those numbers, what do you do with that at the end of
the day? They’re papers honey. Nothing but papers in a stack.
Which may burn or get wet or be taken by the wind. But we’re here
– we are not made of paper or writing. We are in the flesh and we
are bones and we are not leaving, yet. We are staying for this day
too, so let’s just see what happens.
(EN)
Soldiers at the front. The front is a shell – Shell-shock and the
damages at the barrier, absolute. A red line is moving over vast
landscapes, wiping out entire communities – the civilised settler
is a ruthless killer. Having no king; but the ‘manifest destiny’ –
a land of the brave and free, with its swelling edges and smoking
guns. ‘To establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of
man’– She was meant to be a reflection of God. Now, carved from
the divine, are some white, marble pedestals – reserved for the
few and only them.
(AR)
There are six men, one for each sun, and a seventh man
who is the sun in the raw, dressed in black and in red flesh.
But, this seventh man is a horse, a horse with a man leading him.
But it is the horse who is the sun and not the man.
(SE)
Where the water runs in, blue and white speckled plates float in
stillness, sounds of forged wood and porcelain out of reach for
the eye and slowly dancing down towards the brown mud, covering
the floor bed of the ocean. Silk and green tea, drifts on with the
current or returns home. On the sky, Europa is glowing; in a final
breath – before the day takes us.
(AR)
یوم/َday. fifty-two words on page thirty-five. Masaas/ مساس
, 2010. “At first she tried searching among the things around her
for meanings for the words, or for something without a name that
might fit the word, but spoken words had reached everything. The
words without meaning increased until they filled the whole page
and she was no longer able to ignore them.”
(EN)
And then – we left belief for science, abandoned God in hope of
greater consolations – in their search of the ultimate truth,
origin and destination. The West has become a snake, devouring its
own tail – dissolving in hunger without even realising its
disappearing act. Contemporary people, numbed by visions and magic
tricks. We theorise on explosive energy, but forget about the
actual bomb.
(SE)
There’s an illusion embedded in everything. We live by this, by
longing in the image and the poem. We’re searching, in each
movement, towards a formulation. Gestures. There is this idea, to
one day arrive. Exhale. Contain all answers. But we tangle up in
the same words, limited compositions, we repeat. We never arrive.
We occupy. Steal our neighbours territory. We lay down with our
torso on our own chair, while filling the others spot with our
legs. We saturate their room who our scent and our sweat, soaking
their land – ruining the crops. Slowly, we fill your house with
our spirit, leaving all of this behind as we depart. The city. The
building. The archive. The story. We gladly keep. The whole world
under our dome.
(AR)
This is a sharp spear, with nothing at the end. No conclusion,
no reward, nothing more to conquer. When we reach the end of the
spear, we run out of luck. We need to imagine, need to imagine
something beyond the given, beyond our names. Otherwise we’ll
fall, everyone.
(EN)
He was speaking about restitution, of a letter sent to the
president to restore the objects stolen. He stuttered on the word
memory. With the ‘M’, stuck between his lips, he had to exhale and
go again, every time it came up. All his other words around that,
were entirely clear and articulate, everything; so well put – and
that glitch in him, felt like embodied trauma. It had some kind of
deep, unintended, resonance to his subject – to loss – and all the
difficulties in mending that.
(SE)
Our cowboy is alone. His horse, dead by thirst. He has eliminated
all possibilities of collaboration, executed those who got too
close and said farewell to God. He lays down in the burning sand,
exhausted Turning his face to the sky, his blurred vision focuses
on the sun, which will never sink and pray for him again.
Trembling, dark spots circulate above him – his lips taste of
salt, his tongue of iron. A final thought, of being far way from
home – before he opens his eyes fully to the intense – white –
bullet.
Cellophane flowers of yellow and green
Towering over your head
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes and she's gone
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
Lucy in the sky with diamonds