S(h)ave your breath (2017). Recorded literature performance. Duration: 0:04:17

In S(h)ave your breath I talk about the daily manipulation of our ‘breathing’ as well as the creative/artistic process in a fast, marathon race era. In the contemporary urban context speech is determined by a daily breath that is ‘shaved’. Our breath is shaved, rhythmically and drastically. Gradually, speech takes the form of a meaningless tongue twister and even worse, in a foreign language. The one I say here is the well-known Swedish tongue twister Sju sköna sjuksköterskor skötte sju sjuka sjömän på skeppet Shanghai.

Thus, speech becomes unfamiliar and for our reattachment to the social and creative arena we will have to repeat the alphabet again from the beginning. After all, everything starts with a letter. The result is the fictional condition of the Greek letter kappa (κ), which collects ‘cubic’ words beginning with kappa. Against the background of the unfamiliar, intimate images are recalled, seen through a claustrophobic and cubical breath.

Ιn the literature performance S(h)ave your breath we hear two voices in an interactive game. It is the dialogue of ourselves with our environment, or perhaps even our subconscious. It is a conversation, a self-talk or even just the echo of our s(h)aved breath.

The performance was presented in 2017 at the interdisciplinary literature festival of Cyprus, SARDAM.

Other works: Arabic symphony (2019-)