on borders

At the beginning, there is an encounter. The moment when it might be possible to perceive each other, perhaps to trust. Two bodies, close to each other. «look you definitely know my hands there are millions of them in germany they have a long journey behind them before they came here and here their journey goes on and on they are the recruited hands the hired hands and with them the hired bodies.» Özlem Özgül Dündar's text spans from the people brought to Germany in the 1950s and 1960s to help rebuild the country, from their bone-crushing work on assembly lines and construction sites, to the borders and violence that continue to exist, to racism, exclusion, murder. In a patiently insistent, stubbornly searching language, the text follows the materiality of the battered bodies that pass their history on to their children, the metals worked a thousand times on the assembly line, to the wounds inflicted on the bodies, the weapons that kill them. on borders calls the victims by their names, victims of right-wing violence of every age and origin, killed by blows, bullets, fire. The text briefly brings them out of anonymity, gives them a name and a face, yet it is not characterized by anger but by an almost tender longing to perceive and be perceived, to overcome borders and enable a genuine encounter.