March Chronicle by Nika Pećarina & Maria Miguel Pratas

| tag: Nicosia

 

“We try without end to understand what this process means

and the questions asked by our loved ones                become our 

                                                                             questions.

 

While we walk, 

          we clumsily whistle the song they left behind…

as long as our utopias are replaced by military anthems 

                                                          and war sirens.

 

                                  But how can you talk 

                                  about such things?

 

We are forced to find a language that can express them.

 

A language which talks about loss

while at the same time 

            bears the cry of birth.

 

That has the dynamics of history 

and the poetry of fairy tales

            that raise children 

 

            and craft imagined shelters.

                                              So we learned how to speak.




The border in this island functions first and foremost as a constitutive principle of identity. An identity which is woven with a lack of interest, of hatred and unfamiliarity with the Other.

Image 2. Still frames and adapted text from Tongue (2019). COOP study group ~ Half Land, Half Sea: Transcartography of Resistance

Image 3. Still frames and adapted text from Tongue (2019). COOP study group ~ Half Land, Half Sea: Transcartography of Resistance

The seas, 

the rivers, 

the lakes

                         are natural borders that over the years 

                         we have learned to cross.



A friend once told me

that the dead zone 

is the sea of Nicosia,

 

                         the place where you go sit and think

 

as if at the edge 

of an imaginary ocean 

or a stain of sea.




Language                     and the concepts it produces,

open doors,

open roads.

                                            Concepts rejuvenated can transform

                                           the landscape. 

As speech and a spare tool, 

language becomes our weapon and a sharp blade.”

Image 4. Still frames and adapted text from Tongue (2019). COOP study group ~ Half Land, Half Sea: Transcartography of Resistance

__________________

Still frames and adapted text from Tongue (2019),
directed by Andreas Anastasiades and Panayiotis Achniotis
Mixtape with tracks from Ensemble Ars Nova and Yannis Kyriakides and recordings by Nica Pecarina, Maria Miguel Pratas & Ayşe İdil İdil

BACK TO INTRODUCTION: 2024-2025 COOP study group ~ Half Land, Half Sea: Transcartography of Resistance