Bodies Carry Borders

Bodies Carry Borders
Language | Body | Belonging
Poetry and live violin by yael merlini, Sarah Stefanutti and Luise Fakler

We enter the body. Not to describe it, but to dig beneath the skin, to move through saliva, retina, uterus and the tip of the foot. We search for what borders leave behind once they have been crossed, and for the languages that survive underneath.
yael merlini and Sarah Stefanutti write and perform in Italian, English and Yiddish. Luise Fakler's violin does not accompany the words. It cuts into them, holds its breath alongside them and pushes them further.
The texts move from exile into the body as territory. There are tongues distilled like an alchemist's work, and a mother tongue suckled without a breast. There are queer tongues that question exile and prowl the alleyways at night. There is a grandmother crushing a sun-ripened tomato with a warm spoon, red ants moving across the palate, and a Berlin kitchen where only radio waves sit around the table. There is a body with rings on its fingers and a fibula on the clitoris. There are eyes that are sewn, zipped, borrowed, and that refuse to apologize.
Some poems loop until the words wear thin, and the violin loops with them. Others stutter until the translation jams, and the bow stops mid-breath. Heat turns into fire. Women's voices multiply into a chorus - una di noi, unə di noi, one of us - and end mouth to mouth while the house burns.
Nothing here is smooth. Languages rub against each other, meaning tears where it was stretched too far, and the body is never a stable border.