Asylum - a Poem of Unrest

Vienna 2024

This work was commissioned by La Biennale de Lyon and supported by Phileas - the Austrian Office for Contemporary art in Vienna

and Federal Ministry Republic of Austria Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport. Kindly supported by brut Wien. 

„Asylum -  A Poem Of Unrest“ is a profound need to create a new sense of collectivity and togetherness. I invite you to join me in creating different paths of imagining otherwise. At the heart of my poem are insects that confront hyper-individualized human existence. They propose new techniques for collective productivity. This poem invites us to decentralize the focus of ourself and listen more attentively, to how insects navigate this confusing present time and how they protect themselves with handmaid tools against those, who use hate as power to trample upon them. Insects embody cosmic creatures, earthy monsters, underground beasts. They open up new participatory spaces through inclusive practices, so that humanity can find new openings towards themselves and the other beings. 

Asylum - a Poem of Unrest

Video Performance, Theater brut Vienna

Lenght 7:30min., Vienna 2024

Insects: Robert Gabris and Theodor Moise  

Camera, Edit: Gregor Hofbauer

Sound: Ernst Lima 

Management: Lukas Weinzettl Costume Assistance: Alina Amman  Production Assistance: Bernd Eischeid

Thanks to: Zuzana Pristasova, Belinda Kazeem-Kamínski, Zuzana Ernst, Christiane Peschek 

Asylum - A Poem Of Unrest

Before the world as we know today, was shaped by humans hands, we lived in harmony.

Loudly crowding, dissonantly voicing troubles, we navigated each other’s directions.

We collectively embodied corporal compositions of togetherness.

This is a story that cannot be overlooked and filtered from the now.

We are voicing the absence of natural worlds, the absence of our voices in the human archives.

Our bodies become the knowledge to unfold invisible gaps and hegemonic violence in history.

We were brought to silence, but we never remained quiet.

We braid while we imagine becoming otherwise.

We process pain while we learn, how to care for others.

We braid, we daydream, and we process death.

Humans established imperial rules through the use of knives.

Colonizing our ecosystems propelled us into the void, and this provoked new metamorphoses in us.

We built our own asylum where we braid as we modify, we change, we grow.

We braid nets together that keep us from the fall.

While humans drafted their own manifest of freedom, they dressed in heavy gear

to feed themselves from others pain. Our nature provided us with new protection - an exoskeleton.

A hard shell that protects our bodies against those, who step on us.

We are little, but we can grow into beasts, hunting the hunter with our own handmade tools.

We stretch our wings that flap aloud to over-voice the source of hate.

We don’t invent, we remember.

We exchange our organs, we practice love.

We manifest our weaving skills until we unite with you.

This poem awakens lost emotions to be alive again. Imagine the profoundly unspeakable

and listen with us from the deep below. Practice listening to what you couldn’t hear before.

Escape with us from the given territories to the hidden fields, here we enter the asylum together.

The spiritual kingdom, where we shape-shift togetherness in fluid softness.

Here, we live in collective love affairs; we breathe together and organize unrest.

Accept our invitation to swing with us through the now,

or you will never understand, with your human eye.

We need each other, because the I is no longer available.

It should be Us.

Be our companion, because only equals make friends.