Bine Biene 

For SAVVYZΛΛR, Jasmina Al-Qaisi brings us a re-woven configuration of her sound installation “Bine Biene” (2020), where genealogies of care serve as a starting point. The piece is a result of a self-reflection going into her artistic work through a voiced long-poem. Built for the gallery space alte feuerwache in Berlin, she combines reflections on her past with stories of women close to her and implied anthropomorphisms: mixing the information with facts about the Apidae family of insects. 

“Jasmina asked women (memories with & from Despina Ilinca Maria Iorga, Smaranda Ursuleanu, Sina Kerschbaum, Olga Konik, Natalia Acevedo Ferreira, Adela, Ioana, Sasha Nicolae and Ligia Popa) whether and (if yes) what expectations, obligations and burdens they encounter in the face of intergenerational relations and affective cultural transmissions, and in what ways they avoid them. In the material of her research, the figure of the tireless host – as a distorted archetype of female identity (“the busy bee”) – is constantly present.” (Ulrike Gerhardt, translated by bellu&bellu, for the show New East Poetistas curated by Patricia Morosan)

What we see is the work table where Jasmina created the work, and on the back of her chair is the worker's clothes she wore during its creation, exhibited together with the trilingual manuscript of the poem and its soundtrack.

Jasmina Al-Qaisi is a writer and archivist. She writes as she speaks in her own English, caught between sound and visual poetry, often stepping out of ordinary norms of form. She investigates intersections between body politics, intimacy, digitally mediated relationships, voice and memory, homes and aways, often in close communication with her grandmother. She recently inaugurated the archival methodology for performance and radio format "Behind Shelves" as part of the art and project space SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, and published the poesie album "Archival Regrets". She transfers poetry in performative acts and sound with gastronomy into radio formats, most frequently she conducts an on-going radio and culinary research titled "Bites". She often makes waves on free, independent, temporary or mobile radios. She co-authors diverse audio actions with the artist Ralf Wendt. She joined the artistic research project Research and Waves, where she writes, thinks and researches on various themes. As an art writer, she employs poetic and alternative forms to critique and conceptualization. She publishes in Revista ARTA and often develops concepts for independent art and culture initiatives.