Breathing

BREATHING

ELHAM PURIYA MEHR

DOMINIQUE DE GROEN

MARIEKE DE MARÉ

BREATHING

ELHAM PURIYA MEHR

DOMINIQUE DE GROEN

MARIEKE DE MARÉ

Foreword

After Listening and Seeing , Breathing is the third volume in a series of annual publications by the Sounds Now network.

With this series, we would like to offer a space for different perspectives on the creation of long-term structural change through greater inclusion and diversity in contemporary music and sound art.

While the previous volumes had the auditory and visual senses as their themes, we chose breathing for a theme that brings a sense of embodiment into focus. Breathing, a prerequisite for human life itself, is our fundamental connection to the outside world. The breath animates life. It carries sighs, whispers or screams. Its quickening or slowing down reflects and regulates our passions and emotions. It is also the fundamental force of music, from the first human ever to have blown into a conch shell, up to the undulating patterns of rising and falling melodies following (or imitating) the ongoing movements of our chests.

In the three texts of this volume, breathing emerges foremost as a metaphor for connection. “Breathing means being in the world, as well as engaging with the world”, as Elham Puriya Mehr writes. As such, even if an automatic, unconscious act, breathing as the most fundamental shared human activity may stand for the capacity for inclusion, for breathing along with others and for ultimately sharing the air we breathe.

In her performative text “One you Breathe with…”, Elham Puriya Mehr, an Iranian artist, curator and lecturer based in Canada, expands the notion

of breathing to involve a strong notion of resistance. This can be either inner resistance (the ‘breathing space’ one may build in “any stagnant and suffocating environment”) or open protest: a scream, an outcry, uniting people (“keep in mind that one voice always spurs another”) and defying oppression.

A similar sense of solidarity envelops the text of Belgian poet and visual artist Dominique De Groen. It weaves together three female voices, joined in a ritualistic performance, invoking a feminine sense of shared force against the backdrop of an almost apocalyptic post-industrial world. Their ritual emerges as a reconnection with natural power, both ancient in the invocation of goddesses, and timeless. In Counterforces , the text suggests a polyphony of three female voices, alternating or, at the high point, their breaths folded into a single scream. This was reflected in the semi-staged performance of the same title with music by Belgian composer Frederik Croene and which was presented as a Sounds Now production. It features three singers from different vocal backgrounds. Thus, the diversity of vocal expression balances with the universal invocation of female power.

For this publication, we decided to publish some excerpts from Dominique De Groen’s multilingual poem that served as the production’s libretto. In order to represent the themes and issues of that particular work, while offering something that would stand separately from the original work, we asked the Belgian author Marieke De Maré to write a response to it. Her text “Countervoice” is inspired by the production, as well as by

conversations she had with some of the artists involved. It does not attempt to summarize Counterforces , but rather seeks to quietly reflect on some of the issues it presents. One may imagine the two women from her text speaking softly while breathing in unison.

Maarten Beirens, Tom de Cock, Anna Berit Asp Christensen and Anne Marqvardsen

ONE YOU BREATHE WITH...

BY ELHAM PURIYA MEHR

FOR MICHELLE APPS, WHO TAUGHT ME HOW TO BREATHE.

This performative text concentrates on affective breathing as a political action, and in this way embodies curatorial potentialities in building breathing space.

In Farsi, ‘companion’ is ‘ham-dam,’ meaning ‘one you breathe with’.

Breathing means being in the world, as well as engaging with the world to become a single living being. It works as a threshold that opens the world’s doors to you.

The nature of breath is similar to sound in duration. It always contains the past, present and possible future.

In one breath, you invite many bits of life into your chest, archiving them, then releasing them with something of yourself.

Each breath is a collection of what you know, what you sense and what you are dealing with. Breathing is the act of collecting, perceiving, sharing.

You breathe your story into the collective memory of the world, and in return, you invite what exists in the memory of the world into yourself.

The sound you sing is also the sound you breathe. Its rhythm, vibration and harmony speak about your stories from the past, present, and future.

Breathing has so enchanted sound that it can only find identity through it. The sound of breathing is perceptible in every creature, every motion, and every living being. Its rhythms are expressive. They give life to the surroundings and connect you to everything around you. All the events occurring around you depend on breathing. With their own rhythm and their own story.

To live, you breathe, and the repetition of this invites more breaths into the world. Each breath follows another. So breathing-in-theworld means being-in-the-world and making a new world. The iteration of each breath builds a bridge between the worlds. From the world inside to the one outside.

Each breath tells of an emotion, overflowing with events, occurrences and conditions. It describes a sense of warmth and cold, sweetness and sourness, joy and gloom. Whatever it is, it can be identified through its sound. The sound of breathing reveals what is hidden in your chest.

This timeless sound expresses many unsaid words. New or familiar, deep and complete, fast and fragmented, slow and long, these words are improvisational. Your chest composes the sound of breath through senses, through understandings, to share with those who will listen. Those who value the sound, those who listen to the breath.

Listening to others is a process that needs preparation, concentration and care. It is a responsibility. More than for any other sound, it requires closeness, trust, hope and continuity. You hear the sound of air that goes in and out of the lungs, slow or fast, flowing or fragmented. Listening to the sound of breathing changes your emotions and affects your thoughts, actions, and embodiment. Because your breath is a part of life’s breath. Listening to it means hearing the words of life.

Breathing Keeps Going!

Until the darkness makes your lungs empty of breath. There’s trouble in the air, you can feel it and breathe it.

It’s like you’re breathing foreign dust, unfamiliar and painful. Such a threat flows through the air, alters the sound of breathing, occupies the chest and quickens rhythms. It leaves less room to breathe. It steals your most valuable belonging: your ability to breathe normally.

You think this is temporary and that things will change for the better, but nothing happens.

You breathe heavily, as the grey air changes the sound of breathing to wheezing.

A suffocating fog is sneaking under your skin, making you choke as it gets caught in your lungs. This is not just about right now. For years, it has been taking your breath away.

You’ve been locked in this condition for a long time, but you’ve ignored it to survive.

It’s easy to forget that you used to be cheerful. Your feelings, desires, and thoughts are all blocked. You can’t feel them any longer. It is growing dark.

Each empty space of your chest is possessed, so quietly that you haven’t noticed, except through the way you breathe. This situation is so suffocating that even the air feels choked.

That’s enough. The air should be clear.

Perhaps you need to inhale more to make the air breathable.

You scream your anger while gasping, but your breath has blocked the path of your voice. A flash of anger clutches your throat so that you simply cannot talk, or even think.

In fact, it has cut your breath, dried up your mouth and shaken your body.

You feel alienated, sounding foreign even to yourself.

How irritating that the grey air has stolen your life, dreams and hope. To take them back, you have to shriek your rage; otherwise, there would be no breath to let out.

Wake Up! Is the This Last Chance.

Keep in mind that one voice always spurs another. Screaming invites other yells as acoustic partners. A ripple of sympathy spreads across the street, because you are screaming. After some time, you hear the voices of others. In the moments you all are screaming, the power of sound makes your breathing lighter. Sharp cries and short breaths rush from your mouth, a kind of release. Your breaths express what lies someplace between the screams.

Screaming together.

What a rich experience. Friction, the vibration of the body, voice, movement, expressiveness.

But Are These Permanent?

As a small hope starts flowing in your veins, all of a sudden, the sound of soldiers’ boots and their batons is heard. They are marching towards you. As if every one of their steps is a pressure on your chest. Unbelievably they are your brothers, your cousins and your family …

The air between you and them has been cut for a long time. You have felt it deep down in your heart, but didn’t want to accept it.

Instantly, you see clouds of grit and dust lifting into the air. Something unknown, something awkward.

They are coming to take your breath away. In a few minutes, the air will be overwhelming, heavier than ever.

The sound of footsteps is added to the other sounds. What quick rhythms. You turn your face away as if you don’t want to hear it.

Batons and guns attack the chests.

The taste of pepper spray in the air. Looking for a moment of peace within the chaos. The sound of tear gas and smoke makes the air heavier. You see yourself in a space between breathing or not. Your chest rises and falls fitfully.

Holding the breath causes pain. Each exhalation of yours emerges with a sound generated by the hidden pain from the chest.

Heaving with each breath. An unforgettable pain.

People run in all directions, trying to find a hiding place. But the story does not end here. They call out to one another in low voices. The speed of circumstances makes it difficult to breathe. Time is getting tighter.

Here breathing counts as a weakness that can make moving, vulnerability, fragility, and uncertainty stop.

There’s no time. You should run to save your life if you want to keep breathing. You know you cannot survive this.

You sense something is wrong; you can feel it in your heart.

People are running in all directions in panic.

A loud cry from the back street penetrates the hubbub.

You feel a shiver down your spine, turn your head to locate the scream. Time stops.

Suddenly you fall to the ground, bewildered. The strange sensation of hope and fear bound together in one single moment.

In that instant, the slightest movement affects your breathing. You can hear your breathing growing heavier, like moans, coming from deep inside your chest.

A real threat emerges; a real fear is sensed.

You look into a soldier’s eyes. Unbelievably, he gives you a bitter look then turns his eyes elsewhere, as if nothing happened, and vanishes into thin air.

A tear slides down your cheek and fades to whimpers, then silence, as the baton comes down.

In a moment, your ears are whistling, the street is spinning and words are stuck in your throat.

Fresh spots of blood glisten on the asphalt. Silence is breathing the moment. The time of helplessness and fear.

You murmur something beneath your lips, but you don’t know what it is.

You sigh, an exasperated moan.

Is there any breath within this breathing? How can you relieve yourself of this pain?

The shape of the sounds has changed. Groans and laments; screams and shouts. You trust that these sounds will vanish before long. Just like the sounds that will be absorbed by the particles of time, as Forough Farrokhzad sang once:

But, “It Is Only the Sound That Remains.

You hear a voice saying, give me your hand. You find yourself standing in the street, you don’t know where you are.

Listen carefully.

The harmony of muffled breaths has surrounded the street so that you think your head has been underwater for a while.

The sound of breaking waves, the sound of broken hearts.

Ah, frustration has clouded everything, but there’s something that shouldn’t be overlooked. Without it, no meaning will be left.

Breathing. That’s it. You know how to resist now.

HAVE TO BREATHE.

Your lungs breathe air and your heart beats calmly.

Feeling the fresh air in your chest is so thrilling, you can sense it profoundly throughout your body.

As if you have needed air more than blood all these years.

A delighted smile spreads across your face.

How fascinating this moment is.

The grey air is pushed away desperately from within and around you. YOU

It is the refrain of a rhythm that tries to pull other rhythms into its own, but you don’t let it. You are breathing with all your cells, without dread, without hesitation. Every breath you take cleanses the air.

Even if there is no one to hear, even if there is no one to care. You know you are breathing because you can hear your breath.

You breathe not only to liberate yourself, but for those who are behind bars, even for those who can no longer breathe.

Those who spread their stories to the world with their own last breath. Those whose breath you have archived in your chest, to keep their narrative of excitement, exhaustion, exploitation, and hope alive.

What a beautiful moment. The tears spring to your eyes, and you feel, once more, a glimmer of strength and promise.

With breathing, you are creating a wind.

The sound of wind echoes in all spaces, lifts up the voices of expression and awakens dormant souls.

Your inhales and exhales form the wind of change and gradually sweep the dark haze away.

Have you ever believed for a moment that breathing is an act of resistance? In a condition of breathlessness, breathing is a political act, and each breath changes the world.

Breathing is a kind of negotiation between you and your surroundings. Breathing in and out is like making memories, especially when silence fills the space.

You are breathing against darkness, inequality and injustice, and have a steadfast message: a call for change.

It is an action that makes life more colourful, more brilliant, more real.

Each sound that rises from your breath is constantly spreading from chest to chest, from world to world, and living forever.

Your first breath contains many rhythms, but after a while, you feel a serene sea expand in your chest.

They are the rhythms of not-yet events, the ones that are worth waiting for. Your breath creates a barrier against suffocation, a dam that prevents the onslaught of flood.

What an inspiring reaction to any darkness.

You’re not alone in this; you have many companions to breathe with. Those whose breath is their only hope, those who have understood that life is being together. You see the dark clouds slowly move away to give space for living.

Every breath is a weapon that can be used everywhere: at home, in the street, in the city. Your breath makes a new alliance, a glowing idea of harmony. You breathe until you take your breathing space back.

Who Can Silence This Alliance?

Resistance connects solidarities, strong knots that nothing can break.

But you know that the best chance of change is building a breathing space.

Building a breathing space in any stagnant and suffocating environment, in any space where the forces attack heavily.

A space that can keep a part of you hidden in its safety, a home for healing, a place that pushes your attention onto life rather than death.

A space that allows for freedom of movement, or for relief from a given source of pressure.

A space that traps sorrows to give moments of repose. A pause to think life anew.

A vibrant space invites us to live together for a while. A place where a steady flow of life warms the room with dreams and desires.

In the breathing space, bad memories slip away, even for a short moment, chains open, and you can gather all your energy to stand up.

It is a space for emancipation, a place that gives you care, safety, and cure.

To shield your lungs, first you have to make yourself calm so that you can let them be heard, and seen.

You need a place to rest so that you can go back out into the storm again. A space in which stories are told through beating hearts, and breathing.

Breathing together in a breathing space creates a realm of understanding, of visualising dreams and of healing wounds. You breathe what belongs to one another. “You are the air you breathe.”

To remove darkness, the beat of breath must be right, like a symphony that brings sounds together, setting them in place to tell a melodic story.

This takes time. Believe that your breath will be heard over time. Maybe not today, but certainly tomorrow.

A breathing space offers conviviality and peacefulness, and brings safety. It is a place that encourages your new aspirations, where you can breathe a sigh of relief.

It helps you expand your new breath over time, until it takes over the whole world.

It’s like breathing in a sonic body, an emotional and embodied step that represents resistance, but of a peaceful kind.

It’s a space that brings a hopeful turn to the conversation. Through this space, you walk towards life.

It offers you tangible hope and belief for making an uninhabitable space habitable. Your home, your city, a place where you can live with ease and safety.

In the breathing space, you refresh your thoughts to create new memories. Your memories sit with you and you learn how to acknowledge them, to be with them. Without shortness of breath, without panic.

Breathing space cleans the shame shadow across your face.

You promise yourself to breathe your story to others.

And to keep pulsing the air inbetween to make them aware of what they are bringing to this space.

Breathing space prepares you to listen to other breaths. To those who have different rhythms of breath. To those who might have other stories. It inspires you to keep your faith in differences.

If you don’t want to create grey air yourself, if you don’t want to repeat what happened to you to others, allow them to be heard. Let their breath become your breath.

Breathing space is not only a space in which you care for yourself, but also a space in which you learn how to care for others. Making the invisible visible, finding the trace of movement and stillness, permanence and temporality, presence and absence.

When bodies come together, breathing rhythms unify to sing the song of a better life, a different one. Being together and breathing together make a new world.

What An Astonishing Space.

In this space, open the window wide.

Take deep, steady breaths to push back the hopelessness.

Activate your senses to invite yourself and others for a complete exhale of the entire past and a passionate inhale of the present.

To empty your chest for the coming future.

In the breathing space, air travels from one chest to another harmonically.

It fluidly makes its way past the barriers, and participates in a harmonious breath.

And gives a new spirit to life until it is released from everything.

It is a space that opens the way to move on, as small and subtle as this opening may be. It is where you rejoice in companionship, and joyfully build your path with the help of those you breathe with.

COUNTERFORCES

BY DOMINIQUE DE GROEN

TRANSLATED FROM THE DUTCH

BY JONATHAN BEATON

AMOS

PART I: CROSSROADS

Energy of the North Powers of Earth

hollowed out by daily, daily sacrifice

fractured, cracked, and leaking chemicals and tar sands eroded into bright and scorching deserts

arid, rocky soil dead zones where not a thing can grow

aeons of geology bleached into a cadaverous body

LORE

Energy of the East Powers of Air

the skies strewn with trade agreements

IKRAAAN

secret patterns of which none can make head or tail

woven from black smoke that keeps data clouds in the air

toxic gas from shadowy machines in past factories

Energy of the West Powers of Water

glistening thread of collective tears

collective sweat of fear that binds us all

saltwater burns in lungs oxygen-starved nightmare

bodies that are liquified pressed violently from a half-living dream

Of all the timelines, all the paths through history

this one is the darkest of all possible worlds this is the cruelest.

Is it futile?

To try at this late hour to deviate from the path?

To extract it from the stone in which it has been set and make it flow again?

To awaken from this present as if from a bad dream?

Energy of the South Powers of Fire

that melt animals, cities, forests glittering darkness of burning hills

fire from the deepest core of a desert without centre

fire of oil, fire of coal

warm pulsating blood in which we forge our rage into magic weapons

we give birth to our resistance

PART II: RITUALS

I call on a woman with wings and gleaming armour surrounded by lions

behind her shine a golden sun a silver crescent moon an eight-pointed star

Inanna of Mesopotamia goddess of war and power

Inanna, we call on you (repeat)

I call on a woman her hair a mass of glittering snakes

Medusa, who can turn your oppressors into stone

Medusa, we call on you (repeat)

Here comes a woman whose shape is empty, infinite night

from her flows the water from which all life is born

Neith of Egypt dark weaver of cosmos and fate

Neith, we call on you (repeat)

A woman appears standing on a crossroads paths meeting in the dead of night bearing flaming torch and key surrounded by snakes and howling dogs

Hecate of witchcraft of healings herbs and poisonous plants of ghosts and necromancy

Hecate, we call on you

Together we become heavy feel our bodies sinking through layers of earth and rock

dark chunks of compressed timespace slimy labyrinths of deep organic dreams

we sink into a glittering coal body fossilised subterranean body

we feel it become liquid begin to flow dissolve into leaves and wood

feel it flowing through our bloodstreams ancient energy coarsing through our veins

we become part of leaves and roots organic fractals

we become liquid flowing through the earth like water

coal transformed into living plants ancient sunlight released

the earth bathing in bright light

Inanna, Medusa, Neith, Hecate warrior queens of blood and love earth and war fertility and death

we call on you to fight with us

ancient plants trapped in coal

the dollar signs burned out of your corpses

your restless spirits haunting us

we call on you to fight with us

chaotic army organic army soft, dark, coiling army

against smooth lifeless forces demon of the machine zone crushing all life

we call on you we call on you we call on you

IKRAAAN

But I call on all of you too

all you with wounds sticky blood, pixel blood

with clammy hands trembling at the tail ends of the day

with lungs full of cotton fibres that bed down in tender flesh

with nightmares that don’t fall to pieces when the sun touches your skin

each touch an attack a curse that echoes through time that sticks to all generations before you

the needle of history on which you pricked your finger

We call on all of you who have been forgotten (repeat)

Invisible, bleached under bright neon light

slipped through the net to be caught in the web

of bloody scratches where your body and capital ultimately meet

a wound that echoes through centuries of bodies

trauma that copies itself on a conveyor belt to nowhere

I sing a balsam a healing salve for your kind’s wounds your pain and sadness

around me in a circle of skin and fur of arms and lips

circle of tears with which we heal each other’s wounds

black-and-blue marks and cold sweat transform into weapons

to lay waste to the structures pushing down on our bodies.

Close your eyes, glide into your body

past your gullet, your tender organs past slippery membranes

a warm, vulnerable labyrinth

on the ground

you can see a shadow your shadow

eye to eye with a sinister counterpart your own fear, your cruelty the venomous teeth growing out of your gums

you see the shadow and forgive it

you sew your wound back together glue a crack in your mirror image

the two halves dance in the moonlight the white and the black snake intertwined twisting in the mild night air

In the chaos of bodies geometric patterns reveal themselves

the vectors of history become visible

LORE

the invisible paths of money and bodies of oil and gold

I follow them, become liquid glide with you down pipelines

code myself into datasets, complex algorithms trickle into offshore bank accounts

burn myself amid the timbers of ships that on the long night of the middle passage hallucinated a dark future and vomited it on the shores of America on tobacco plantations and sugar beet fields

interweave myself with the yarn in droning mechanical looms that swallow the streams of bodies a dark magnetic pull

swirl amid clouds of black coal smoke that hardens, solidifies into cities forms itself into an industrial revolution

wrap myself around the double helix of modified crops patented lifeforms

a new landscape like a layer over the old one a smooth and nameless landscape an anonymous clump of raw materials

a universe stripped of secrets elements robbed of magic cogs in the machine…

We follow the folds in the fabric of history and the path of time takes on material form

all levels, mechanisms, processes mineral and geological digital and biological from the smallest chemical reaction to global geopolitics are all intermeshed

I see the structures crystallising growing like fractals tentacles all stretching outward through the fabric of time and space…

We follow the folds in the fabric of history

revealed before me are webs of causal chains in which we are ensnared

the mysterious links by which a Carboniferous fern can warp stock prices

understanding how the web holds together is magic

make new folds in the universe dig secret tunnels through history wormholes in time and space

rearrange the causal chains that bind history together

trace the lines to their origin turn them into lines of flight

away from the present.

PART III: EXORCISM

AMOS

… after I followed organic fossil currents

here I stand ancient swamp of giant plants ferns as tall as houses

IKRAAAN

the air moist, intoxicating humming with vitality heavy with the smells of flowers and rich mud

a vibrant explosion of life trees rising sky-high from silent slime from dark, bubbling, fermenting water here I lie… (repeat)

… floating in the warm water

Inanna’s eight-pointed star shining bright in the muddy darkness

Medusa’s snakes dancing in the currents

Hecate enchanting seaweeds and algae giving them magic power

Neith infusing the water with cosmic life force

I feel their force surge through me as I find myself…

… eye to eye with the demon that has made its nest in forgotten passageways of my being dug out by distant forebears

my ragged scars become amulets that blind him, bind him

my shadows, my darkest thoughts become snakes that wrap around him till he bursts

I slice the demonic cord through the middle weave it into a magical symbol

drive the dark force away to the dark extremities of the cosmos the forgotten cave of time from whence it slithered

suck the venom out of the universe infect the infernal logarithms with a countervirus

Spread roots and veins suck the power from the demon and its dark alchemy transforming life into toxic clouds of burning coal

I coil my plant-body around it

suckers and tendrils twigs and stems and leaves

I become a body of vegetal force

LORE

AMOS

IKRAAAN

LORE

IKRAAAN

AMOS

IKRAAAN

AMOS

LORE

and I squeeze

I banish you from the subterranean zones where life is born

I banish you from the depths of my body

I banish you from history’s secret channels

I banish you from the wound out of which time was born

I banish you pull your hard, sharp hooks out of my tissue

I banish you from seeds and cells exorcise you from arid soils

To be able to grow on the border of light and shadow

To make the soil sing with life

To break the concrete horizon and let in the light of celestial bodies

COUNTERVOICE

BY MARIEKE DE MARÉ

TRANSLATED FROM THE DUTCH

BY JONATHAN BEATON

Evening falls.

Two women are sitting on a bench.

They stare out in silence.

High above their heads there hangs a fine new crescent moon.

One of the women says: ‘The sun is shining somewhere.’

It grows dark around them.

They chose a bench far from home.

They walked a long way to get there.

‘I want to stay here indefinitely,’ says one of them.

She doesn’t reveal that her verruca pinched all the way there.

‘Me too,’ says the other. ‘Here I feel freed from time.’

‘Do you really feel that way?’

‘No,’ she says.

They laugh.

A reed warbler flies past.

The two women know that it’s on its way to Gibraltar, that it will pause there before flying onward to Morocco.

The reed warbler doesn’t know those words.

It flies.

‘Shall we start?’, one of them asks.

‘Can we wait just a bit longer?, the other one asks, closing her eyes.

She thinks about what she left behind today and what she could’ve, would’ve, should’ve done.

And she still might have.

Or perhaps she could have.

Because perhaps then she would be.

And perhaps she certainly would.

But perhaps it wasn’t possible.

And it wasn’t the case.

She thinks of the children.

Always the children.

She thinks of her daughter.

She thinks of her daughter’s heart.

She thinks of her daughter’s anomalous heart.

Didn’t she always say it? ‘My daughter’s heart has an anomaly.’

She says it all the time.

‘Mydaughtersuffersfromcoarctatioaortae.’

It’s the most difficult term in her vocabulary, but she can pronounce it with verve.

Smoothly articulated, with the stresses in the right places. A term that occasionally emboldens her to share with others the fact that she actually knows a bit of Latin.

‘Coarctatio Aortae.’

Treatable. Not insurmountable. There’s hope.

Some, at least.

She thinks of the flowers.

Always the flowers.

Whether they have enough water.

Whether they have enough space.

Whether they have enough energy.

Whether they have enough air.

Nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide.

She takes deep breaths in and out.

‘Are you okay?’, the other woman asks. ‘Yes,’ she lies.

She thinks of the universe with its countless spheres of light.

The big ones light up the small ones. They’re all hot on the inside and enrobed with a solidified, gradually cooling crust. A stinking fungal layer on one of these crusts gave rise to something new: the human being.

‘Should we begin then?’ one woman asks. ‘Let’s begin,’ says the other.

Both remove their sturdy shoes and socks.

They place their shoes beside them on the bench, stuff the socks into them.

It’s cold underfoot.

One of them says: ‘I’ve longed for this.’

They both reach into their backpacks and retrieve a small jar, containing blood they will use to fertilise the earth.

Their blood. Moonblood.

‘I’ll get moving,’ says one.

‘I’ll be behind you,’ says the other.

Step by step, following their own rhythm, they make their way through the earthy field that stretches up to the foot of the bench like an immense ruffled blanket.

It’s pitch black, but the women aren’t afraid. They walk.

Slowly and tangibly.

Now and then they spill a drop of blood on the earth.

‘Are you still there?’ one asks.

‘Yes,’ says the other.

‘Do you have something to tell me?’

It’s dark and unlit when one woman, a jar of blood in her hands and her feet planted in the earth, tells the other that she sometimes shakes her head vigorously to kill swarming words.

‘Sometimes, when I close my eyes, they come at me, like mechanical blue mint beetles attacking my body. They come crawling up from under my feet and soon cover my body, seeking out cracks and holes to penetrate. From my calves, legs and buttocks, they crawl up from under my dress in the direction of my anus and vagina. There are also beetles that go further, teeming all over my torso, moving via my chest to my narrow shoulders, across my neck and along my chin, in search of my warm mouth, my cracked lips, going right down my throat to my buzzing vocal cords, where they cause a pile up. The beetles that can no longer get in that way invade via alternative routes like my nose and ears, colonising my whole head. I shake my body, swat away the shiny beetles, but the more I swat, the more beetles appear. Each strike leads to a new invasion. Not only do the blue battalions keep coming, now there are also rose chafer beetles and highly armoured tortoise beetles wriggling in my belly, which is getting firmer and firmer. Yellow-green groups nestle around my brain, seeking to grab onto something, choke something, kill something, with the tiny hooks they have for feet. They aren’t successful, so new waves of beetle armies continue to arrive.’

Silence.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Sure, I’m still here, right beside you. I’m listening. Anything else you want to tell me?’

‘No. That’s it for now. You?’

Silence.

‘I’d like to tell you that I sometimes hide myself away in a bear suit. I crawl into a big, brown, plush body, put on a heavy, brown head and go and lie on the carpet. Then I think: my hibernation is beginning. I do this when no one’s home.’

The two women laugh quietly in the night.

‘Shall we hum?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You start? Then I’ll do the countervoice.’

The two women love polyphonic music.

They don’t like having just one main melody. They prefer a lively mishmash of voices that criss-cross and collide with each other, voices that go with the flow and follow, voices that steal highs and share lows, voices that sometimes take over from each other.

They sing.

Sometimes loudly. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes legato. Sometimes staccato. Sometimes with emphasis, sometimes with affectation. Sometimes they shout, sometimes they ask. For help.

And like with words on paper, it’s not the notes, but something between the notes, that touches them. Though they couldn’t tell you what.

Their song resonates over the earth.

And then there’s silence.

‘Shall we go back?’

‘Yes. Let’s go back.’

The women fumble around in the dark, making their way back to the bench. They put their socks and sturdy shoes back on. They sit down.

In silence.

And there they’ll stay, just a little longer.

*based on the libretto from Counterforces and inspired by a conversation with Frederik Croene and Dominique De Groen

*dotted throughout the text are references to Marieke De Maré’s two poetic novels: BULT (2020) and Ikganaardeschapen (2024)

ELHAM PURIYA MEHR is an independent artist, curator, and lecturer based in Vancouver on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. She received her BA and MA from Tehran University of Art, Ph.D. in Art Research from Alzahra University and now is a Research Fellow at Advanced Practice in Goldsmiths, University of London. Her researches focus on curatorial knowledge in social contexts, non-Western curatorial methodologies, and public engagement. She has worked internationally as an educator, curator, and writer over the past sixteen years, and lectured in conferences, symposia and talks in Tehran, Singapore, Amsterdam, Vienna, Calgary and Vancouver. She is a co-founder of Empty Space Studio, a non-profit nomadic platform based in Tehran and Vancouver.

DOMINIQUE DE GROEN is a writer, poet and visual artist. Her work is characterised by a critical attitude towards globalisation and capitalism. For example, she drew inspiration for her debut Shop Girl (2017), in which she analyses the fast-fashion industry, from the time she worked at Primark, and the poems in Sticky Drama (2019) include as their subjects the depletion of natural resources, environmental pollution and global warming. Her fourth collection Slangen (Snakes, 2022), for which she won the 2022 Jan Campert Prize, questions, among other things, the still-prevailing belief in progress. She is currently working on Corpus Britney , a novel about capitalism, witchcraft and Britney Spears.

MARIEKE DE MARÉ invents, writes and tells stories. She’s the kind that doesn’t lie in the sun. Often turns red, especially in her neck, where the blood flows to her heart. Therefore always looks for ways to be sincere, because lying was never a possibility. In everything she does, she has the ability to see beauty in the most vulnerable moments and enjoys sharing this with others. In 2020, she made her debut with the novel BULT , which was critically acclaimed. Her second novel Ikganaardeschapen will be published in February 2024.

Sounds Now: The Project

Sounds Now is a 5-year project presented by a consortium of 9 European music festivals and cultural institutions that disseminate contemporary music, experimental music and sound art.

In this project, we are concerned with the way in which the contemporary music and sound art worlds reproduce the same patterns of power and exclusion that are dominant at all levels of our societies, all the more so because these sectors are committed to promoting progressive agendas.

Sounds Now consequently aims to stimulate diversity within this professional field by reflecting and challenging current curatorial practices. Activities are directed at bringing new voices, perspectives and backgrounds into contemporary music festivals. Centering on three pillars of diversity — gender/gender identity, ethnic and socio-economic background — the project includes a range of actions such as labs for curators, curating courses, artistic productions, symposia and research. In this way, Sounds Now seeks to open up the possibility for different experiences, conditions and perspectives to be defining forces in shaping the sonic art that reaches audiences today.

www.sounds-now.eu

Sounds Now Partners

Creative Europe

The Creative Europe programme is the European Commission’s framework programme for support to the cultural and audiovisual sectors. It aims to improve access to European culture and creative works, and to promote innovation and creativity.

The Culture Strand of Creative Europe helps cultural and creative organisations, such as those involved in the Sounds Now project, to operate transnationally. It provides financial support to activities with a European dimension that aim to strengthen the transnational creation and circulation of European works, developing transnational mobility, audience development (accessible and inclusive culture), innovation and capacity building, notably in digitisation, new business models, education and training.

The Sounds Now project gratefully acknowledges the support provided by Creative Europe in bringing artists and cultural operators the opportunity to foster artistic works and improve practices, thereby contributing to a strong and vibrant European music sector.

www.eacea.ec.europa.eu

© 2024, Sounds Now

All rights reserved

Published by Musica Impulse Centre

Design: Patty Kaes

Print: Haletra, Houthalen-Helchteren, Belgium

Distribution Musica Impulse Centre, Pelt, Belgium

ISBN 9789464667516

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and writers.