I was able to see the first edition of The Observatory at Kaserne Basel, and upon reading the prompt I was reminded of the many thoughts the lecture performance had stirred on the ways we observe and how our observation is at all times mitigated. I was also reminiscing about the conversations I’ve had with Seven on how this circumstance relates to our perception of different bodies, specifically the ones that were “discovered” by the West during the process of Colonization, bodies that were in turn named and described by modern Western (pseudo) sciences with the tool of language. To think that language, neither static nor objective, was not impacted by the discourse that invented the “other bodies” seems delusive. The West’s highly ambitious and violent endeavor to include the entire globe in the Enlightenment’s overexposure has impacted the language and the associations we continuously operate with to conceptualize regions, to speak of a body.

Whilst picturing myself looking into the night sky, at an astral object cloaked in darkness, I was immediately inclined to switch positions, to write from the perspective of not the observing subject but the observed object, the body that all the words and ascriptions fall upon to force it into the light. I thought about the model, meaning the collective discursive expectations that the resting body is measured against. I started writing poems as well as an abstract fantasy about the existence of a body in darkness. I appropriated and slightly adjusted definitions of the word “model”. All of these I collaged into a cry that hopefully conveys the somewhat naive longing for the impossible: to exist and be seen on one’s own terms.

Written, performed, recorded and produced by Norwin Tharayil
Video editing and production by Rohini Devasher (2022)
Text design by Sijya Gupta and Legion Seven