Reader-in-Residence: Migratory Passages
Omar Berrada, The Waves are Undecidable
In response to Migratory Passages, Berrada has written a series of poems accompanied by a soundtrack. Listen to the audio composition, and see transcribed poems and soundtrack credits below.
1.
Yassine Rachidi, Momo L’homnanbule
Mohsen stoops
collects
a shoe
washed ashore
a bottle a message
a jacket someone wore
the striated horizon rests
on a man’s rounded back
a raft is gliding through
contained in the soft
hazy embrace the parallel
wrinkles of a shirt a theme
for the cross
the waves are undecidable
2.
please help we are waiting
we believed we would be rescued
a certain specific kind of ship
we are not in a position to say
we believed we would be rescued
we believed we would be rescued
a call for help registered
by the authorities no official
statement only reconstruction
by some survivors we
believed we would be rescued
no biscuit no water you
almost capsized us you
never came back they
left without warning we
believed we would
be rescued the boats did they
hear our distress or was it a
different helicopter a noisy
spray of water you never
came back this is a fishing
fleet any boat now on his
own on the land these
people very clear very
close the vessel the
brigade some of the
survivors we believed
we would be rescued2
3.
Sheikh Imam, El Bahr Beyedhak Leih
why is the sea laughing
as I stroll down to fill my jugs?
the sea is angry not laughing
was the story ever funny
the sea’s wound won’t heal
just like ours never healed
why is the sea laughing
as I stroll down to fill my jugs?
poor us we laugh at disaster
like roosters sweet souls
stolen by a searing knife
while hope still glows inside
why is the sea laughing
as I stroll down to fill my jugs?
our jugs of Qena pottery
the songs and stories they tell
jug of shame I will not drink
your water even mixed with honey3
4.
Shalby Younis & Ghazal Ghrayeb, Mayel Ala Baladi
from the gold and silver ship
she threw her ring to the sea
he threw flour to the fish
the fish find the ring
the boy wins the girl
secures a kingdom
we will fasten the dresses
we will close our minds
to the fated mandate
an eye a well a spring
we seek cure in water
see wolves in our dreams
see deer with broken
antlers see settlers
get there first occupy
even our demons these
wells are uncanny
creatures sometimes they overflow
they get mad they
take lives
they stole all the water and
in memory of the wound
we
forever
haunt
the remains4
5.
“If your child dey grow, na water he go use
If water kill your child, na water you go use
(…)
I say water no get enemy”
—Omar Berrada
The Waves are Undecidable
A Reader-in-Residence response to Migratory Passages by Omar Berrada.
Across the eight-part lightbox series Burning Glass, Reading Stone, the Blackwood activates a Reader-in-Residence program that brings eight readers into dialogue with eight suites of images. Adapting the familiar artist’s residency format to one that focuses on practices of reading—reading an exhibition, reading a text, reading as interpretation—each reader-in-residence respond to a specific series of works presented in the Blackwood Gallery’s lightboxes.
The Blackwood
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The Blackwood is situated on the Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Seneca, and Huron-Wendat.