What’s the Point of Poetry Today?

The story of this project began in Minsk in 2010, where the artist Sergey Shabohin recorded a video in which the protagonists of the Belarusian contemporary art scene – their faces hidden behind masks – presented various slogans. According to Sergey Shabohin, the art-terrorist gesture symbolized the state of affairs for artists in modern societies. It is very difficult for an artist to gain public attention, no matter what subject he wants to address. Shortly thereafter, the project spread internationally. The Belarusian artists began to travel the world and photograph themselves in public spaces with slogans in their hands and masks over their heads.

The slogans made reference to the problems of contemporary art in each country. The exhibition What’s the Point of Poetry? features poets wearing the mask. The task was to bring together terms like ›poetry‹, ›society‹, and ›homeland‹ with a slogan. The poets not only represent themselves, but act as the voice of their respective countries. For the implementation of the art-activist gesture, the poet had to find a public space and follow clear guidelines that were given for the production of the photo.

Now how do these guidelines have an influence on the poetic slogan? Do the poets defy at least a few aspects of it, for example, disregarding the question of the relationship between poetry and homeland? Or, through their expression, do they turn it into something completely new – ironic, dramatic, or serious – because they go out into a public space and have to present their slogans in public? Does the slogan make sense, is it motivating, or is it at least exciting?

These questions will inevitably lead to more questions. Do the poets manage to represent their countries without fear and explore the boundary between the individual (freedom of poetic expression) and the general public (justice), as well as find a way to define that boundary today? What about this boundary in regards to poetry, their individual countries, and the joint European space? What do we think today about the boundaries in general – spatial, temporal, social, cultural, sexual – and how can they be overcome?

The answers to these questions depend on the extent that poetry is linked, on the one hand with the concept of homeland and, on the other, the concept of society. It also depends on how the language, for which the poet is considered a means of subsistence (Brodsky), is still seen today as »the house of being« (Heidegger). Who lives in this house and in what way; who or what stands outside of its borders? 

In many Central and Eastern European countries, these questions arose with intensity after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly, a conversation about collective identity and origin set itself in motion again. Simultaneously, terms like ›nation‹ and ›homeland‹ were charged with new meaning. Meanwhile, what happened to the old meaning? To national pride, modern national culture, or the romantic ideas of harmony and genius?

It seems that these questions concern contemporary artists. Does poetry also have the ability to respond to them and provide answers? If modern and especially actionist art is interactive (and it is, because otherwise it would be dead), then what can be said about the poetry? Is the poet capable of going beyond the solutions inherent in art toward that general space of the senses and life that combines with our responsibility to ourselves and to others? And how would this space look today?

This last question allows us to emphasize another dimension of the connection or the disparity between poetry, homeland, and society. This is the dimension of present day Europe. What can the modern poet assert about Europe? And what type of image of Europe is revealed in the array of poetic slogans? Is it an image of Europe’s past, present, or future? Does it describe a European poly- or cacophony?

A slogan presented in a public space can only be effective today if it makes a statement about something really meaningful. The mask anonymizes, it makes the wearer clandestine and thus unpredictable and even threatening. Maybe this aspect in particular creates a way to recognize »the violence and hatred of things« from behind the mask of language, which, according to Deleuze, gain the upper hand if »other things in the structure of the world« are missing. Isn’t this what occurs as the definitive metaphor of our coexistence? Nationality, language, sex, color, age, or wealth remain largely invisible in a world that is dominated by generalization and whose flipside is isolation.

Can words help here, poetic words? Are they able to connect while maintaining heterogeneity, and can they unify without ignoring the differences (Foucault)? Can poetry both resist the violence of things if I am separated from the other (Deleuze), as well as the violence of the language itself, which moves the things into a dimension of meanings that is strange to them (Žižek)? Can the figure of the »poet in the public space with an actionist mask and with a slogan in his hand« resist the violence of things without falling back on the violence of words, so that it remains possible for him to assert freedom, whose flipside is not only more freedom, but also justice?

Olga Shparaga
assisted by Sergey Shabohin