Kristian Byskov / What world to come back to

Photo: Margarita del Carmen.

Listen to the Danish audio performance of  the text below

Click here for the Danish text

/

Grey hills in the landscape shape themselves like wrinkled skin. A clenched surface, squirming and twisting like a big cloth. Lost to this world it lies desolate – a body dying and full of pain. The birds never really land here – as if something awful is passed on by touch. Here and there lie organs like crystals of memories misplaced in a forgetful mind. 

 

 

All the collapses that happen around us cling to us. The sand in Sahara no longer blows with the wind to the Amazonas. Now the forest is its own desert of poisonous water. Gradually, we find out that what we are missing, is a place to go. Where can we go to scream our doubt? Where is the place we can go together to cry our eyes out? Where are the squares, the monuments, the temples where we can cry over the loss of this world. That we lost it. That we cannot take any more. That we have finally gone mad. And so has the forest, the grass, and the frogs. And the worms and the rats and worms of the rats and rats of the worms in us. 

 

 

We see new shapes come out of our bodies. Shapes we never thought we would see. First they come like bumps. Then they become a hilly landscape of valleys and rivers. The wind howls and the leaves of the trees rattle on our stomachs and up along our chests. It cools our skin on its moist areas. The picky birds fly around the limps that slowly and shimmering grow out. Thousands of knees come out. They grow, stretch and twist. Become legs sticking in all directions. Squirmingly they push aside our heads and our arms so at last, we are a body only of legs.

 

 

//

The Sound recording is from a performance by Kristian Byskov and Lil Lacy. Audio restauration by Kristian Hverring.

It was performed at the opening of Kristian Byskov’s exhibition «What world to come back to» at Udstillingsstedet Sydhavn Station, 2018.

The image material is also from this exhibition.

NWCC thanks Kristian Byskov and everyone involved!