This Year's Girls / It Can't Happen Here

Spoken Word Performance, 09/05/2019
Fest des Österreichischen Pavillons / Biennale von Venedig 2019

We are MALA SIRENA.
We are The Ghosts Within.

We are here to remind you of that which has been forgotten
of that which some people want to be safely stored
in the trashcan of history.

We sing about gender
We sing for those who know It Can Happen Here
despite others claim that it can’t happen here.
we sing for those to whom it happened
and to whom it keeps happening.

We sing for those who know they are not safe.

We sing about the organization of control
about Ulysses and Zorro and King Size.
about leisure time which is the sister of production
we sing for women who don’t cry
and also for those who cry.

We sing against patriarchy because we know
that the father of the idiot bastard son
was a Nazi in congress

We sing for this year’s girl who should have been already last years girl,
and before last years and before and before last year’s girl,
for all the girls who should have been here way before

and we sing for those who walk like a woman and talk like a man
or the other way round
for the girls who will be boys and for the boys who will be girls and
for everyone who is
in between

We create, we rebel, we decide,
but it’s true we get upset quite quickly and then
we can’t control ourselves
and despite we think clearly
we can be quite
unpredictable
we’ve got scars on our arms and cracks in our hips and dents in our cars
and
we’re breaking the strings but not for the temperature
but for What Happens Here
And we will be breaking more as the pills came way too late and
we will not join that century that some people want us to live in and
nothing is fine.

The broken shards on the floor
reflect our diamond siren eyes
and they see everything

Today we sing for Renate and for Felicitas,
and for all those who helped to realize their project
and we raise our voices for those who keep resisting and dissenting

And today, we sing against
repression
hypocrisy and disfranchisement
against the confusion of politics with reckless exertion of power
against those who ignore the rules of democracy
against exclusion
against lies and „alternative facts“
and against those
whose careless words in the end might make murder

We don’t sing for such governments.

We should not, never, think that It Can’t Happen Here.
Rights can be taken away in the blink of an eye.
As it happens, it just happens now.

So all of you who we sing for, know that we sing for you
and you know who you are.
And all the others, listen carefully.
You won’t get rid of us.

We are here to remind you.
We are a bad siren.
We are MALA SIRENA.