Tunsā I |‍ ‍fixed media 

(2026) – 10’ 

Sina M Fard and Conor Abbott Brown

We developed Tunsā I collaboratively in the Sonology Voltage Control Studio by dwelling with, responding to, and then splintering our responses to a recording of Mahmoud Darwish reading his poem "تُنْسى، كأنك لم تكن" (“You’ll Be Forgotten, As If You Never Were”). Our process was informed by the following passage from the poem:  

فالمفرداتُ 

تسُوسُني وأسُوسُها. أنا شكلها 

وهي التجلِّي الحُرُّ. 

Vocabulary  

governs me and I govern it. I am its shape 

and it is the free transfiguration. 

Translation by Fady Joudah

We counter-transfigured the crystalline contour of the poem's vocabulary into unpronounceable, primordial shapes. The piece teeters: in one direction, a sinking fear of having arrived too late into a tragic narrative to change it, and in the other, a hope that future generations will be privileged to forget the vocabularies of exile and dehumanization.