We are children of our age,
it's a political age.
All day long, all through the night,
all affairs -- yours, ours, theirs --
are political affairs.
Whether you like it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin, a political cast,
your eyes, a political slant.
Whatever you say reverberates,
whatever you don't say speaks for itself.
So either way you're talking politics.
Even when you take to the woods,
you're taking political steps
on political grounds.
Apolitical poems are also political,
and above us shines a moon
no longer purely lunar.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
And though it troubles the digestion
it's a question, as always, of politics.
To acquire a political meaning
you don't even have to be human.
Raw material will do,
or protein feed, or crude oil,
or a conference table whose shape
was quarreled over for months;
Should we arbitrate life and death
at a round table or a square one?
Meanwhile, people perished,
animals died,
houses burned,
and the fields ran wild
just as in times immemorial
and less political.
Wislawa Szymborska
Artist: Jenny Holzer
Site: Hotel Pennsylvania, New York, USA
October 29, 2004
Text: “Children of Our Age,” from View with a Grain of Sand by Wisława Szymborska
Projection: Charles Passarelli
Photo: Attilio Maranzano
Excelente foto. Nós somos um produto da sociedade, das politicas, daquilo que vivemos e deixamos que outros escolham por nós. Somos manipulados, escravizados e dominados pela politica pelos grandes dogmas. Petróleo, capital, jogos de interesses...controlam o mundo e controlam-me a mim.
ResponderEliminarEsta artista conceptual, Jenny Holzer, é famosa pelas suas projeções em edifícios e outras estruturas arquitetónicas. O foco (aqui o termo "foco" é muito apropriado...) principal do seu trabalho consiste no uso de palavras e ideias no espaço público. Aqui usou parte do poema de Wislawa Szymborska, projetando-o no Hotel Pennsylvania em Nova Iorque.
EliminarSim AC, somos manipuldos e controlados e de facto mesmo quando optamos por não escolher e deixamos que os outros escolham por nós, estamos a tomar uma posição política.
Todas as nossas atitudes e posições podem ser lidas politicamente, como escreve Wislawa:
"Whatever you say reverberates,
whatever you don't say speaks for itself.
So either way you're talking politics."
Até a nossa existência:
"To be or not to be, that is the question.
And though it troubles the digestion
it's a question, as always, of politics."