Translation of the audio track of the installation
STRING TENSION HISTORY, 2026
Kirstin Burckhardt
Intro
Imagine three strings, placed side-by-side; taught, tension, history.
String 1
The relationship between me and my harp is simple: two bodies, I open up here, down there. She tilts, falls at her center of gravity, lungs against resonant body, measuring the boundary, length of my arms.
My arms were shorter when I first began to dream. As a child, I knew I wanted to play the harp. Not because of the sound (to this day, most uses of this instrument bore me), but because of the body.
But there was no harp in our town. Instead, I got the recorder. To this day, little bite marks of small teeth are still visible in the white, smooth surface of the mouthpiece.
We moved when I was nine. Harp lessons, at last. Dreaming remained as my arms drifted across the strings for hours, completely absorbed. But the longer my arms grew, the more aware I became of the world watching me. Shyness and shame replaced my child’s delight in showing; and trying-things-out turned into a test I failed. I played only in secret, no longer even for myself, because it was my own gaze that I needed most protection from. And so, in becoming a woman, I choked on my own voice.
String 2
The old harp came to me in my twenties. All my savings in a taught bond of wood and strings, tuning pins and pedals, neck and body – all bound together in a concert harp string tension of 1 metric ton.
Her story was far longer than my arms – countless arm’s lengths long. She was built in England and delivered to Hanover on the day the First World War broke out. Where was she during the two World Wars, and afterwards? Through whose arms did she pass? On which side of history was she played? Were there bombs falling nearby, making her body tremble? Is it possible to say that she “survived” the wars? That she bears their marks?
More than 110 years later, her center has begun to bulge. Her body is splitting open.
String 1
My belly had been bulging since my teens. Bowing outwards. How many times I was asked, even by strangers, whether I was pregnant – countless times. What I didn’t know was that my swelling was pointing to an internal rupture, an internal bleeding.
My gynecologist didn’t respont to my pain, which I, too, was normalizing. Isn’t it like this for everyone who menstruates: that it hurts to the point of vomitting? My General Pracitioner prescribed charcoal treatments. It’s not only the care-providers that are the problem, but also us, me, believing that a female body hurts.
My story is not special, and that is the truly painful part of it. After more than twenty years without a diagnosis, at age 35, I finally got an answer: endometriosis. There were clinicians who took me seriously. Some were even alarmed and sent me straight to the hospital. Laparoscopic surgeries followed. Removing two cysts from my left ovary each 4 centimeters, and one 8-centimeter cyst from my right. My first general anesthetic, followed by a second, two days later, because my internal bleeding was not stopping.
Becoming horizontal; being cut open; in the state “of”. It was only later, in lying psychoanalysis, that I cried – finally endlessly.
String 2
The reparation of a harp. Some things should not be lying; they are made to stand. If they are, they have fallen, broken. She lay fallow, unusable, bare, opened nakedness.
String 3
My German great-grandfather, Fritz Hofmann, was a psychiatrist and public health doctor from 1934 bis 1940 in Dieburg-Darmstadt. As the “Commissioner of the Gau Office for Racial Policy” at the State Health Office, he was responsible for the “Implementation of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.” As an assessor on a Hereditary Health Court, his signature was used to enforce compulsory sterilizations – in the name of medicine, for the “health of a people.” He commissioned and assessed reports in line with fascist hatred, which divided lives into those deemed worthy and unworthy, ultimately leading to the euthanasia crimes. He took his job seriously, believing himself to be right and justified. He could have acted differently. He and others used the power of the state to forcibly violate people’s bodies.
They – robbed of the right to choose. Forced into becoming horizontal, their bodily boundaries slit open. Unforgivable. It was my aunt who first confronted this heavy legacy and family taboo. Today, a memorial plaque at the Darmstadt Hospital commemorates the victims. Approximately 350,000 people were sterilized against their will. In one medical assessment, a man is asked why a “sick or too stupid man” should not be allowed to marry. His answer: “That’s not what the Führer wants.”
String 1
In 2023, I had my third and fourth surgeries. What began as a routine examination ended with an additional diagnosis: endometrioid borderline tumor. A liminal land between cancer and non-cancer – to exist as both. Whether it was a result of the long untreated endometriosis, research cannot say, yet. It is, however, considered highly likely. They removed both of my fallopian tubes, one ovary, and parts of my peritoneum. I will likely never have children of my own.
String 2
The harp has openings, holes. I open my legs and put my mouth to it. My voice – I feet it vibrating at her resonant body, my thighs rub against her, going shhh. A lamento?
Epilogue
Let’s reclaim our bodies. The sick, twisted, hurt, bent, broken, blossomed, cut, crippled, reborn bodies. It is time. It’s transgenerational time, time that it needs for an arm to grow, time to die, time to heal, time to reclaim, now more than ever. Let’s reclaim our bodies. It’s not history. It is now.