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.

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Sarah Johanna Theurer reads an excerpt from Affiliations

by Mira Mattar

“When I see me in the mirror I see you. I study you in your occasional grace. Scoring and Peeling an orange. Halfving and handing me segments. The top and bottom disks stacked to the side. Oranges have everything I want- They are what they are all at once. Their word, their color, their fruit. In English, in Arabic, what else cold say that for itself ? What else constantly sees its being what it is not?”

Sarah Johanna Theurer is a curator focusing on time-based arts and techno-social entanglements.

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