I Don’t Know Where I Begin

Immersive video installation in three chapters commissioned for RAUM SPACE festival in Kaliningrad 2020.

Chapter 1: The Song of the Dog
Archival footage plays: a male television host interviews a beloved Peruvian children’s TV presenter who would later take her own life. He asks, “Are you as saintly as your last name suggests? How much of Saint, and how much of María, is in you?” The question, veiled as charm, reveals a deeply misogynistic gaze that demands women perform purity, even in the spotlight. It lays bare the uneasy tension between public image, morality, and the roles women are forced to inhabit.

Chapter 2: The Song of the Body
I don’t know where I begin
I don’t know where I begin
Does it start in my fingers?
Does it start where it hurts?

The voice repeats as Giovanina Sequeira moves through a hypnotic choreography: an exploration of physical and emotional boundaries, of where the self begins and where it dissolves. Her body enters a quiet conversation with the camera, a tension between exposure and retreat, closeness and distance. Each gesture becomes a question, a search for where the edges of feeling and form truly lie.

Chapter 3: The Song of the Worm
The piece closes with Song of the Worm, a haunting and delicate track written and performed by Julia Skoryh. A worm sings about longing, about wanting to see higher, beyond the limits of what its body allows. It’s a quiet meditation on perspective, groundedness, and desire.

The project also included a workshop conducted by Dasha Abdulia in Kaliningrad, Russia, where participants were interviewed about the body, its borders, its memory, its constraints.