Merima Dizdarević

Poet, performance artist

Multilingualism is a central part of my life and work and the question of language loyalty/disloyalty, regarding my first language/mother tongue and provenance is inevitably and involuntarily significant, especially when it comes to my artistic endeavours that come to be in the realms of former Yugoslavia or in the context of Yugoslav diaspora elsewhere.

I write in three languages; English, Swedish and BCS (Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian [+ Montenegrin]), a language I, along with others, refer to as “Naški” or “our language”. I have published a book in the three languages paralleled, but mostly not translated. At Saari I will primarily focus on three parallel manuscripts connected to performative poetry and hence work with these texts in combination with performance ideas. For the last couple of years I have mostly been performing in collectives, but am also keen to develop my solo performances tied to the texts I am working on. Simultaneously, I will be recording audio poetry with lo-fi musical elements based on the texts.

Alongside this, and time-allowing, I would like to explore some more things. One of them is this triad of the Yugoslav, the Swedish and the Finnish, something I would like to delve into on site.