The piece touches the boundaries between virtual and real spaces, between imagined and embodied voices, and between reality and mental illness. The audience is guided through a sonic journey, inspired by stories of women bound to live at the edge of society. This journey begins with lullabies from European countries, collected during workshops organised by HowNow, with women living in shelters in the Parisian area, who are fighting their way back to a more stable life. During these meetings, it became clear that, due to the traumatic nature of their experiences, some stories were impossible to be told, and it was not for me to tell them but, rather, to connect with them on a deeper level.

Our journey questions the perception of reality, where virtual and embodied voices contain within themselves a multitude of forms, spaces, and faces, like a perpetually shifting polyhedron.

Some of Mina Loy’s early poems, shaped by her unconventional and nomadic life, anticipate her later fascination with fringe figures of society. To Mina Loy, they are individuals who sidestep the existential search for meaning.

Claudia Scroccaro

Poems by Mina Loy used in the work On the Edge by Clauda Scroccaro

I think I made you up inside my head
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Permission to reproduce texts from the publications of Mina Loy has been granted by Roger Conover, Literary Executor of the Estate of Mina Loy

XIII
Come to me There is something
I have got to tell you and I can't tell
Something taking shape
Something that has a new name
A new dimension
A new use
A new illusion
It is ambient          And it is in your eyes
Something shiny      Something only for you
                                    Something that I must not see
It is in my ears        Something very resonant
Something that you must not hear
                                Something only for me
              […]
Where two or three are welded together
They shall become One
              […]
Oh that's right
Keep away from me.      Please give me a push
Don't let me understand you      Don't realise me
Or we might tumble together
Depersonalized
Identical
          […]
Me you — you — me

XVIII
Out of the severing
Of hill from hill
The interim
Of star from star
The nascent
Static
Of night
[…]
Clear carving
Breath-giving
Pollen smelling
Space
White telling
Of slaking
Drinkable
Through fingers
Running water
Grass haulms
Grow to
Leading astray
Of fireflies
Aerial quadrille
Bouncing
Off one another
Again conjoining
In recaptured pulses
Of light
You too
Had something
At that time
Of a green-lit glow-worm

Yet slowly drenched
To raylessness
In rain

XXI
I store up nights against you
Heavy with shut-flower's nightmares
Stack noons
Curled to the solitaire
Core of the
Sun

From Songs to Johannes, by Mina Loy
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And in that moment
Silence
cold
Hush Hush hush