Mount Mound Refuse
sound and poetry performance by Jessika Khazrik

  • Mount Mound Refuse

    Jessika Khazrik, courtesy of the artist

Kem Care presents a sound and poetry performance by Jessika Khazrik. "Mount Mound Refuse" began as a multi-lingual poem exploring encounters of the body and the global economy through memories of toxicity, adolescent love, black metal and computational connectivities.

Set on the edge of a quarry neighbouring the artist’s home, it re-visits the ecocidal dumping of toxic waste and promises of reconstruction both on the internet and in the built environment. Invisible animals, several pronouns, friends and lovers known as R__O and Little Arsonist stroll spatio-linguistic construction sites while unearthing the history of pleasure, profit and refuse. The young, secret lovers haphazardly share grounds with poisonous trades that are tacitly legitimized by global politics and local militia.

Voiced in Arabic, English, Italian and hybrid tongues that were encountered while investigating the toxic trade, language within the composition becomes a material witness to the limits of translation, desire and place. Acronyms of the chemical formulas encountered in the forest are turned into verses of poetry. The composition is partially made through field recordings taken wherever it is performed, as well as sounds that the artist recorded between the ages of 13 and 16.

Jessika Khazrik  (1991, born and based in Beirut) is an indisciplinary artist and writer working with technoperformance, composition and the history of science. She holds a BA in Linguistics and Theatre from the Lebanese University and a MSc in Art, Culture and Technology from MIT where she was awarded the Ada Lovelace prize. She was a fellow at Home Workspace Program in Ashkal Alwan (2012-14), a resident at La Non Maison (2015) and Marra.tein (2016). She has presented work at The Normandy Landfill, the Stanford Research Institute, the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut Art Center, Sursock Museum, LUMA Foundation, ICA Boston, Center of Documentary Arts and Research at UC Santa Cruz, LACE, her house, the internet and Theater der Welt, among others. Her essays and poems were published in Bidayat Journal, Kohl Journal, The Funambulist, Almodon and Ibraaz among other edited anthologies. A frequent collaborator as a performer and researcher/writer, she sometimes works under the Society of False Witnesses.