This artwork was initially created in Collaboration of Klaas Hübner with sound design. Space21 Radio Festival 2020
Transcription:
I remember,
I remember everything
I remember years and years back
Back to her, her first gasp sound of horror when the man came in
The husband they called, but seven years old is not old enough to understand what a
husband can be, or who a husband is, it is the life of a woman she believed,
Or maybe not, maybe it is what I told myself, whenever I had questions that lead to no
answers, “it has been like that and It will continue like that, there is nothing you can do
about it”
This is what I heard from my mom, probably she has heard this herself, believed, worked by,
told and told and told…
Grand grandma to grandma, grandma to mom, mom to me, and not from me to my
daughter.
Because I don’t want to have kids.
She got pregnant with her first egg, she did not have a choice, she did not know what a
choice is, later she got to know what choice is but learnt that it was not hers.
But here is the thing, after hundred years I learned it is mine, I must have it, because even
though it was challenging, I somehow figured it out, but even after tons of tears, years of
anger clouds over my head, years of acceptance, years of working away from the spot light,
years of thinking it is not worth it, years of giving myself away because , “it has been like that
and It will continue like that, there is nothing you can do about it”… but yet we have done
something about it.
Time passes by, there are sounds that I still remember…
I remember the sound of the lullaby’s she would sing
To her babies or to herself
There are sounds that I remember
The sound of the shotguns
The sound of the screams
The sound of her giving up
Giving up on counting the wars, since she couldn’t just forget them
I remember her houseI remember it perfectly in detail, she had 4 calendars on the wall each from a different year,
three clocks that didn’t work and a carpet with a picture of a little boy on it.
We were both the same, completely the same, but from different times, yet I did not
understand how could she! How could she bear all of that…
and I remember the confusion on her face each time she would look at me… which would
lead us both to a cold sight and a helpless laughter.
Time passed
Her room vanished
My room destroyed
“it has been like that and It will go like that, there is nothing you can do about it”
We
Learned
Fought
Changed
Evolved
Gained
she was here, I was here and I am here. And I will be…
This artwork was produced by Niga Salam and Klaas Hübner for Space21 annual sound
festival
Niga Salam – Solo Short Version
Checkout Klaas’s solo version
This artwork is fusion of three different generations with in a timeless, formless concept. The concept reflects on the morphs of womanhood and gender that applies with time. In the process covering the story of their great grandmother, who was alive in the time of this artwork. This was a sound installation displayed on a public street during the uplift of the Covid-19 lockdown in Sulaymaniyah
