Solo Performance 

20 min. 

In Greek mythology, Philomela’s story introduces a literary tradition about the theft of voice — her tongue is cut out after rape. Her story ends not in muteness, but in transformation. Literature is as full of silenced protagonists as the world itself. But it is also full of their echoes, rebellions, returns.

My piece is a counteract, performatively challenging a culture where voicelessness is systematically ingrained. A moving body of vocal cords, stretched, overstrained, incapacitated. Exploring the tension between powerlessness and the (re)gaining of express-ability. Experimenting with silence and sound, presence and absence, contraction and release. Literary fragments. Recordings of my long-durational performance of a text I wrote after experiencing a sexual assault.

A living archive of voices lost and fought for. An incomplete constellation of the unspeakable. A body- based ethnography. A liturgy of what the body remembers — even when words fail. 

Concept and Performance: Ailin Nolmans

Premiered at Gessnerallee Zürich