PAPER
FIELD NOTES
©Kieron Jina


A Border is a Line that 
birds cannot see or, 
we have everything 
we need to start again








A performance by Kieron Jina at Haus der Berliner Festspiele 06.05.2025

Kieron Jina: concept, artistic direction, script-writer, costume, voice-over, and performance
Yogin Sullaphen: sound composition & music direction 
Jade Bowers: dramaturge, poster design, costume
Being invited to a friend's production feels like a home-cooked meal. You don’t ask what’s on the menu; it is enough to know the style, characteristics, and tone of the kitchen. So on a late Saturday afternoon, I went to Haus der Berliner Festspiele. The institution's 60th anniversary of Forum Theatertreffen highlights performative positions from international makers, curated by Aljoscha Begrich, Sima Djabar Zadegan, and Nora Hertlein-Hull.
We are welcomed to the side wing of the house, the one I remember as the breakout space with a bar and access to the back garden. There are no clear markers indicating where the performance is to take place, no signifiers between audience and stage. General confusion sets in - we don’t know where to go, in which direction to look - until we receive the note that looking out is the direction in which something, for now, will happen.

As directed, we are all facing the large glassed side that opens toward the big chestnut tree in front of the building, in full bloom, covered in the warmest early evening sunlight. As if the world out there is glazed in honey. I remember the heavy smell of the blossoms from passing by earlier - just that now, there is no smell, no warmth on my skin, no airflow. We are sitting in the shady interior, and while I remember that out there is all real, now - with this framing - I wonder: is it? The perfection of the framed image suddenly appears like the hue of an Instagram filter. And although I don’t think this was entirely intentional, I enjoy diving into the layeredness of it all. Later, the window itself will become a moment of closeness, that point of almost, which is crucial and manifests the performance's way of engaging with the deconstructed stage.

While there is still some commotion amongst the quiet excitement - “Yoh, Chomie” tones from the speakers - Kieron Jina, aka Afrohomo’s, voice comes through, and I can’t stop smiling because it transports me to a place and time that is special on whole other levels and a very South African way to proclaim friendship. Then a woman’s voice, carried by a long life, wisdom, and warmth. Jina’s mother lives in Durban, a coastal city in the southeast of the country, where the artist grew up before moving to Johannesburg and then Berlin.

My mother, a woman of steel and grace, Lived in a time where movement was
forbidden. She was told: Your skin is a lock, and you will never hold the key.
But she defied their walls. She whispered stories in the dark, Not of rage, but of resilience.

I am reminded of Ed Young’s mural in downtown Johannesburg: CALL YOUR MOTHER - massive white letters on a black background painted onto a brick building. The South African artist usually engages with in-your-face social and political commentary, hovering between funny and grotesque. His work always ignites something.
The sound installation which switches between narration and music composed by long-term collaborator Yogin Sullaphen, continues. Then, we see a figure emerge - bright yellow-orange jacket and juicy leather trousers.  Jina uses the front lawn outside as his stage, deliberately playing with the people, the unaware passersby become brief protagonists - some of them look at us, looking at them. We are all laughing, which creates this cute moment of unity inside, a shared moment among strangers. 

This conspiratorial feel runs through the entire piece, yet it never goes beyond that. Many of us have bad vantage points, something always seems to be in the way, but only a few people stand up and change their position. The correctness of behaviour persists, even though the whole stage-audience-theatre hierarchy was thrown overboard from the beginning. The conversation between Jina and his mother progresses, interwoven with contemplations on his journey thus far - the movements, the obstacles. He reminds himself of being a migrant. And of the fact that we can hold opposites within us. It is not either/or - it is always the multiverse.

I woke up with that “I’m a Barbie girl” song looping in my head—random, right? 
Meanwhile, the world is on fire, people are struggling, borders are tightening...
and here I am in line for coffee, whispering to myself: Hi migrant, hi migrant,
hi migrant, sure migrant, jump in!

Jina’s performances are often carried by a different engagement with space - gently and firmly forcing us to tilt our heads a bit more this way or that way. Something we didn’t expect, without it becoming the spectacle or the point, but rather the unapologetic modus operandi. His performances are largely based on personal experience - the brown queer body, the idea of Self and the world - and always, a sense of joy. 
Joy, pleasure, and frolicking are actions that can become political statements in a world still - and arguably with a worsening tendency - categorized by who has the time, space, and privilege to leisure, to enjoy, just because.

A Border is a Line that Birds Cannot See is a snippet of a life, of beginnings and routes and movements of grace and appreciation, with humour and pleasure. 

Do you know what birds teach us? Not just how to fly, but how to see. A falcon’s gaze -
piercing, patient, precise - surveys the room, filtering the noise, finding only what matters.
But humans, oh, we struggle. We see the lines drawn in the sand, borders traced by hands
we never shook, and we call them real.


*Title and indented parts taken from the performance script. 


 






   


          
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