İpek Seyalıoğlu. Mourning Cotton Flowers

An X-Berg Poem

Mourning Cotton Flowers is An X-Berg Poem that stems from the idea of the district being a home for many who have been forced to leave their countries, for the homeless who look for shelter in the streets, and for the addicts who scream through their bodies that there is something wrong in the society. Today the streets of the neighborhood may disturb some people, especially the locals filled with some sort of nostalgia, but the once industrial district with so many stories of working class, resistance, and counterculture still inspires many, like the needle that evolved into sewing machines, gramophones, and syringes. 
Finding refuge in a Kerngehäuse – a former Kindernähmaschinenfabrik on Cuvrystraße, İpek Seyalıoğlu dived both into the cultural diversity and the personal stories in the neighborhood upon her arrival to Berlin, which gave her the impulse to do a theatre performance. In her previous solo, she had already started exploring live writing and performance on stage, but this time as not only X-Berg but Berlin is the city of sounds, she was willing to experiment with sound. Alexander Markvart, an avant-garde sound artist and a performer, agreed to collaborate with her. Now in Mourning Cotton Flowers. A X-Berg Poem, they are threading together an experimental contemporary poem through live writing, live sound, and physical performance, bringing some of the so-called erased memories back to where they belong. 

“I am a broken record with a broken heart.
I am a broken record with a broken heart.
My heart is a broken record of the unrecorded.
I am an unrecorded record of my broken heart.”

Supported by Projektfonds Kulturförderung Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg