CIRCA PLATFORMS NEW IDEAS FROM EMERGING AND ESTABLISHED ARTISTS TO SUPPORT THE #CIRCAECONOMY
Tonight No Poetry Will Serve by Alfredo Jaar offers a powerful reflection on the limits of language and the role of creative expression in times of tragedy. A lament for today’s darkness and a call to find the words to confront these tragic hours, the bold new public intervention displays the arresting title of a poem by Adrienne Rich (1929–2012), a figure of inspiration for Jaar since the 1980s, who observed the limits of words in times of unthinkable violence: “no poetry can serve to mitigate such acts, they nullify language itself,” she wrote in 2011.
Throughout November 2023, Alfredo Jaar and CIRCA commissioned a series of poetic dialogues, curated by Vittoria de Franchis, from international writers, thinkers and speakers. Giving voice to those who find themselves silenced or without words, the poems hope to achieve Rich’s ambition that creative expression can reconcile conflicting realities.
They empty the swimming-baths and lay out the dead.
There are children who haven’t learnt to swim, bundled
With budgerigars and tabbies under the stairs.
Shockwaves are wrinkling the water that isn’t there.
Noah Kulwin is a writer based in New York City and co-host of the political history podcast Blowback.