Somatic TaleOhrZ. Part II: Bodies With Unique Shapes or How Could A Voice Rewrite A Text?
Video installation with sound.
HDV, colour, sound.
Duration: 14 min 37 sec

Somatic TaleOhrZ is a text-, sound- and performance based work comprising two video projections. The first video with the title “Who Is the Next Person to Wear It?” is a short fairytale which investigates the relation between (queer) desire, embodied home, violence, textile, and exile. 
The work takes the form of a performance for the video camera: a song and a dance for a “garment-without-destination”. The fairytale narrates the life of Faraq Shayar Alli-Tis Faraz.

Within the condition of post-colonial global discontent which is unequally imposed on different areas of the world, this work constructs a fairytale in order to celebrate an embodied garment and the sonic power of language. It explores the significance of the (queer) singularity within the plural (queer) collective desire(s). The work proposes (and wishes) the transformation of the not-any-more towards the (perpetual) not-yet.

The second part of the work with the title “Bodies With Unique Shapes or How Could A Voice Rewrite A Text?” includes a brief introduction about the history of textile- and ready-to-wear industry. The text is especially written for this piece by the Greek historian F.R.

Stylianidou subsequently sends the text to Asad Alvi, writer and translator based in Karachi, inviting them to read and record the text. Through their embodied voice, Alvi proposes their own perspective and knowledge into the historical text creating new layers of listening experience.

Vassiliea Stylianidou approaches textile as a medium that could serve as a possible language connecting /or dividing people and geopolitical regions. Since textile is inextricably linked to the development of capitalism and (post)colonialism, this work attempts to interweave some (queer) glitches within the complex his-story of inequality, the division between “North and South,” “West and East,”.

The work was especially conceived for the exhibition “Is It Possible to Exist Outside of Language?” which took place at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi, Pakistan during August and September 2019. Organized by the Goethe Institut in Karachi. Curated by Aziz Sohail.

Text / Camera / Video editing / Sound composition: Vassiliea Stylianidou
Vocals: littlediva and Franck-Lee Alli-Tis
Conception and implementation of the performative garment: Theodora Provopoulou
Performer: Franck-Lee Alli-Tis
Text about the history of the textile- and ready-to-wear industry: F. R.**
Embodied performative reading and recording of the historical text: Asad Alvi

Special thanks to: Eftychios Agathonikos, Jürgen Meyer, Amelia Seymour, Chryssa Tsampazi, Theodora Provopoulou, Asad Alvi, Aziz Sohail and to Ayse Orhon for their generous contribution and support!

Click here to visit Somatic TaleOhrZ. Part I