This project explores nimic through embodied perception and its fractures. The work is composed as an autobiographical sound-poem built from glitches, corrupted audio, and digital interruptions, sonic remains of a childhood that could not yet fully inhabit its own body. When perception is incomplete, when the body cannot be sensed as a whole, memory does not form linearly; it accumulates as residue. The sounds of nimic emerge from this condition.
Childhood appears here not as innocence but as a restless negotiation of legitimacy: where agency is unstable, constantly deferred, never fully authorized. I locate myself in the gaps between sensation and meaning, between bodily presence and the inability to name it. Also, glitches mirror this position. There are moments when systems hesitate, when continuity fails, when something insists on being heard without permission.
The work treats nothingness as an active force, an intrusion that produces new forms of agency through error. By working with noise, distortion, and failure, I reclaim these interruptions as sites of spot. Nimic becomes the space where the body speaks indirectly, through fracture rather than coherence.
‘Where the Body Fails to Load’
- FIRST THERE WAS THE SYNESTHESIA OF COLOR
first came the error——
tschttttt, tschhhhttt, time split into capsules and bigger time after time, tschhhtt i hear a woman’s voice and by how loud it hits me i think it’s grandma the classic disney story collection
voluntari was the first place i threw up cheese puffs, though they hadn’t seemed spoiled when i ate them
revenge after the first punishment when minimax was taken away and bedtime forced at eight, hot concrete and insect static tscchhhhttt tschtttt
everything lived in my ears and then slipped into my synapses, asphalt lifting and all i hear is “tschhttt, come to the taaaable, it’s reaaady, tschttt”, i need rest, a screen that doesn’t exist, my mother’s shiny pink nokia
tschhhtt i eat my favorite salad, boeuf, vine leaves shielding me from the heat and intrusive sun
in the shade i see pebbles clearer and absorb better from the missing light——
i try to stand and fail, i need recalibration, other muscles to answer my needs on command
a ladybug crawls over me and takes off too late, only when it reaches the tip of my nail
to absorb itself into overload
tingles, buzz, the crackle of the tv, freezer evaporation, corrupted and never enough, i find a stable base in stillness and interval, i collide with what might once have been called regeneration —— when from exhaustion you grow back toward the surface, that’s what you hear between sounds so shattered you can’t tell their origin or destination. i was understood and understood myself perfectly among so many acrobatics with and without detox
the flattering weather tells me it likes me and would never change temperament, it walks across my fingers, hangs from my edges, and tingles me as i unstitch from reality, i’m only happy in overwhelm and overstimulation, in the audio of tschhhtt and trrrrrsssttt and taaaaannccc and other pops i can’t reproduce
I met my childhood later than I should have and earlier than expected. I try to be a good girl inside myself, never in danger that serious, always ready to tschhhtt and never picky at the table, and it feels like splashing in water you’re not allowed to get wet in
everyone on grandma’s street had a computer except me, i had a ps4 where i played ratchet who with cyborg limbs mangled other sinister cyborgs or i tried to pass a brutal level when the arena filled with alien ships and all i could say were sounds like LATCHEEET because i couldn’t pronounce the R or NUUU, NUU IAAALL (“not again”) when i lost and that’s all for now, i remember nothing else from those intervals of time trapped inside colors i didn’t know how to name or separate.
- SEPARATING FROM THE BODY LIKE A FLAKE OF MOLD
i guarded/was guarded back, trrrrrsttt —— synesthesia tells me my childhood was also a glitch i tried to wear like proof
i’m a lifeguard of rules, shielding my scales from self-predation and my ears from vuvuzelas screaming beyond the arena where the biggest matches and rushed metro routes are always playing
the one who plays doesn’t look, the one who descends is already far from the escalator
PLEASE CLEAR THE TRACK. THE TRAIN IS COMING / PLEASE GO FUCK YOURSELF
the biggest act of self-love I ever did was abandon a version of me I loved.
i saw the first recordings through the giant camera in a man’s giant palm, at the school show i was the letter N from the alphabet, afterward grandma replaying how messy my hair was and how much prettier i had been as an angel in winter “mara come on repeat the little songs” but i don’t remember if i sang them right before the ceremony
as a supernatural being i wanted to be – first a princess, then a witch, then a fairy, then an elf, then a vampire, and now i’m still into vampires in my post-post-post adolescence era
you can be anything as long as you obey material rules girlhood is a spectrum —— archived reels of heuristic dialectical digital alter-ego knowledge, instagram, you solve me like papaya or vanilla lotion is restoring shine to my dehydrated skin.
connect/disconnect / best version buffering / a fighter crust growing in my frontal lobe. “they’re calling you” —— a long arm handing me a landline, i hadn’t phoned anyone since dialing everyone in the contact list —— uncles aunts grandparents friends of mum and dad classmates —— the monthly bill came WOAHHH and i was never left that alone at home again
i detect autonomy, i see my body in the mirror for the first time and the thought slips instantly: why are my brain and my sounds —— always foreign to the body they lived in —— not stapled to another piece of flesh which is now translated in the modern language as a person / an individual /a human
I overthink whenever the fridge starts growling like it’s mutating legs. i learned reading and counting really fast in kindergarten
LATAAA (rață ——>duck)
TAAALZIIUU (târziu ——> late)
TLEEEEIII (trei ——> three)
PATLUUU (patru ——> four)
The letter R arrived late, I was reading Beauty and the Beast aloud and suddenly every R cracked clean and sharp. I covered my mouth to check it wasn’t a glitch dream trick, then repeated THREE FOUR THREE FOUR and shock —— it stayed. I ran to the red cord phone, dialled a number that I still remember and screamed into the familiar voice:
“MOM I CAN SAY THREE AND FOUR THREE AND FOUR THREE AND FOUR!!!!”
- FIGHT OR FLIGHT —— METEOR OR SUN INSIDE THE HOUSE?
i am terrified and peaceful at once, i freeze like a cube inside a freezer
tschtttt it’s another phone buzz, and i always joke with my friend that the security services are listening
whenever i slept in the afternoon i heard different birds than in the morning —— at the start of the day, there were seagulls, and toward the end, the pigeons would sing
i still dream of the vibrations and mischievous glitches from the sun hanging off my skin, refusing to let go. lively chirping and rarely tired, the usual drowsiness dragging deeper into lethargy, the only moments when i feel whole and envied by the system
when i stay for other people, i stay longer for myself too, an atrocious benefactor feeling i take on and let sprout
all this excess romanticizing also sprouting from wrung-out blankets and troubled people
you place your favorite lighter entirely into my hand from yours, your fingers cold and rigid, and all i could do was calm down, soften, and take it as one last gesture of affection.
Every family carries a gift and i kept dreaming of this in one of those afternoons when sleep wouldn’t take me, but i could feel the serotonin fading. I checked the screen and two or three foreign notifications appeared, stirring curiosity out of me.
a single shift in balance can reroute the trajectory of lost objects in the room
pathos and honor when things unfold differently, and we recognize the symbiosis in the popping of a balloon or the scraping of a sheet of paper.
In another order of things, the body becomes more like a fluid you pierce and then try to drain yourself from, to escape yourself without spending your agency or legitimacy. That’s how you earn immunity and regain beginner’s luck.
like when what is dear to you gets distorted into a position from which you can no longer sink or submerge. you guard and grow sick before an entire segment of knowledge and reflection, before your own body, you cannot abandon and in front of which you still cannot surrender. so in the en,d you’re left only with the image of what should have been and might have become while you search for another placement, more coherent and more daring.
TSCHHHHHTTTT
TSCHHHHTTTTTTTTTTT
TSCHTTTTTTTTTTTT – longer please, louder please. i cannot hear, but i can listen, can you do that as well? will you hear me but not listen?
the last time i ate meatballs with cranberry jam sauce was when i picked up a gaming chair for my desk from a gigantic store stuffed with things for big houses and gardens, even apartments. i stayed on the top floor and watched the lights in the sky flicker on and off, proof they were airplanes and that i was close to the airport.
a major error in judgment
i made —— and had already made —— a major error in judgment when i was caught finding out something online i wasn’t supposed to. i shouldn’t have been on those sources of information, and once again i was trapped among algorithmic reels, kneading my ego.
btw, have you seen jude’s latest film with/about vampires?
4. IN ANOTHER ORDER OF THINGS I FELT AIRED OUT ON THE BEACH, SAND SLIPPING INTO MY ASS
i’ll confess it once, twice, three times and then never again
i was glitched and my body is an ecosystem glitch that opens and closes like an orchid stem, i hear a sharp voice over the phone: “orchids are so hard to maintain”
we’re talking about self-love and self-made myths in a seminar so BORIIIING at my master’s and i’m scrolling on my phone, imagining who i would’ve been if i’d grown up an iPad kid and nothing comes to mind except a grotesque sense of emptiness and how sad i would have already been at 4-5-6 years old
I believe in bullshitness hihi——for real, will you trust me enough with believing in anything at all?
girlhood is a spectrum, i want to have hundreds of occupations at the same time: to be a writer, a singer, an actress, a film director, a fashion designer, a lawyer, a member of parliament.
AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME!!
When a relative calls me, even on my birthdays, the one who always says the last time she saw me was from the ultrasound my mother once sent while i was still in the womb, I immediately think maybe someone has died.
loss of the sun, closer to the personal growth and other tiktok bullshits
in another order of things, what else could i even do or say? i can dip my meatballs in the sauce and still feel ashamed of the fear airplanes plant inside me.
The TSCHHTTT sound is everywhere: in a freezing afternoon, in a rainy morning, at a heat-drowned sunset or in a night full of thunder, whether i’m asleep, awake, or drifting in and out.
i like doing crosswords and puzzle grids, time passes faster on the train when i get locked into them, i’m happy when i finish and see the tables complete and the little squares filled with dark blue ink and that’s how a level of complicated satisfaction feels, one i can’t always tell apart from overload.
in another order of things, many of them may be coincidences or may not connect at all, but i try not to engage anymore with what could have been or what might have happened, only with the nights when i repeat the audio proofs of self-love.
i peel the orange skin away and feast on the food i used to hate as a child. it feels like terminating a contract or cutting a call mid-conversation, catching a faint smile toward a new form of attachment that long ago wasn’t reciprocal.
i was what i became and i am what i will be,
The glitches are mine, and i loop. The body is built from billions of glitches synthesized and harmonized across childhood, adolescence, and post-adolescence. glitches and memories i’m not always aware of, but that pierce my mind like a wooden bullet when you least expect it or when you’re not ready to face them.
that’s how it feels, that’s how it looks from the inside. My glitches are a chronology of events, reveries, people, anecdotes and happenings that can leave and return at any time, and i think that is, at the very least, formidable.
in other situations, it can feel exhausting, unpredictable and shockingly absurd, but you need jester contexts when the mind and the body start speaking and claim legitimacy before you. you need a protective layer or a thin skin you can tear off so the wound can weave itself back together, cleaner, healthier. You’re in the most enviable state when it catches you and forces you to see what you failed to recognize in the present moment of the error in judgment. it consumes, hurts, intoxicates, clarifies, surprises, confuses and drags you back into non- escapist rabbit holes. This is how we’re wired to function, and that’s the thing with glitches. they regenerate and respawn just when you think you’ve hardened into your most solid, cauterized holographic self.