
Somewhere between Guinea Bissau and Haiti
This sound work is part of the podcast series Museum of Breath.
With: James Désiris, Mélanie Grant, Stéphanie Saxemard, and Zephrine Royer (storytelling); Sana Na n’Hada (storytelling, bombolom); Olivier Marboeuf (composition, poems, voice, recordings); Victor Donati (recordings, editing, sound design); Blessing Tony and Shela Sheikh (voices)
With excerpts from Geba Films Archives (Guinea-Bissau) digitized by Arsenal Institut für Film und Videokunst e. V. (Berlin) and for Dangerous Matter, a performance by Olivier Marboeuf as part of Looming Creole, a collective project conceived by Filipa César for The New Alphabet (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin 2019)
Good evening
I’m so happy to be here
I love you so much
You don’t know
You can’t know
How I love you
I’m your matter
I’m your matter
You can’t see all the electricity
on my sweet mimicry
Vibrations of pleasure and fear
Painful contingency
I’m ready to be used
I’m your matter
I’m so happy to be here
Happy and exhausted
I love you so much
I’ve got so much love
in me
Where can I put all that love?
Who’s got room enough for that love?
Ocean of love
full of fossils
I come from a painful world
A scattered world
I was angry that they called me the storyteller
That they called me the weaver
That they called me the monster
as if they wanted me to tell the secrets
But I’ve got so many voices in me
Cause I’m just a lonely matter
A smiling surface
A masquerade
A dangerous matter
Trembling matter
Lovely matter
Unnameable matter
Priceless matter
Oh ! Worthless matter
Do you see me now?
I’m always here and invisible
Assembling the tapestry
Weaving skins and tears
I’m the mute matter
The secret matter
I’m ready to be used
I’m ready to be used
If you want to get lost
I know a way
The only way
Towards the depths of ocean
From Guinea to Haiti
I’ll whisper so many stories to you
Fake stories
Dark stories
That you will forget everything
And will lost your mind
I’m the cacophonic matter
Cause there is so many voices
In me
So many ways
Lost highways
And warm voices
I’m the possession
I’m the invisible matter in everything
In the landscape
In the tapestry
You can’t see me
You can’t catch me
I’m your matter
But can’t know me
I’m the possession