We open the cult sci-fi novel from our back pockets and start reading. The story begins — snakes and scars. Letters from a runaway. Study notes and cover versions. A folk song in a new language. A happy ending, and we close the book.
We try again — a recording studio in Nashville. A second hand bookstore. A bus station, a way station, a seedbank. The Scala and the Jeong. Another ending.
One more time — a starship powered by desire. A shell revealing our souls. A forest, singing to another forest. High tide.
Again …?
What do we do when the happy ending doesn’t make us happy? / What do we do with a utopia haunted by ghosts? / How do we know when the story ends?
»Seedling«, a new stagework from ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, navigates a multiverse in search of beauty and meaning in the unending circular mess of our Queer lives. It’s the ninth chapter of the two-year constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths and a companion to »Palace of Ash & Rain« which showed at Ballhaus Ost in autumn ’24. www.withforestsinourmouths.com
Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS make multidisciplinary performance works, often using the Queer constructed language Damiá as an artistic tool. In 2023, they left Berlin for a new home at the edge of the forest in North Karelia, Finland.
