CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL

Söndag 14 juni Kl 12–13, 13–14
Carnegiesal, Novotel
Avrundande samtal mellan publik och föreläsare

Bombing of Poems is a poetic event in which cities that have experience aerial bombing in the past are now bombed with poems. The performance consists of dropping one hundred thousand poems printed in bookmarks from an aircraft – a helicopter or plane – over cities bombed during military confrontations. The bookmarks are released at night and, as in the case of a real bombing, without previous warning. Until now, the performance has been carried out in three different places: the government palace of Chile called La Moneda, bombed by Pinochet on 11 September 1973; the city of Dubrovnik (Croatia), shelled on 6 December 1991 by Serbian and Montenegrin forces; and the city of Guernica (Basque Country, Spain), which suffered the first Nazi air-bombardment on 26 April 1937.
Bombing of Poems is regarded as an open work that operates as a structure given a priori, one that is composed by the sky, the falling of unusual objects from the sky and human force—the air bombs, the war—that transforms cities into rubble rather than ruins. This presentation argues that the Bombing of Poems becomes the reverse of a military strategy-event which actualizes the victimization of the citizens and the chosen cites to be bombed by poems.  My presentation will focuses on the case of Germany, and particularly, the city of Dresden, where the historical controversies around its destruction allow me to recognize the difficulties of a possible performance in this city. For this purpose it utilizes information gathered during my visits to Dresden and Guernica in 2007 and 2008, respectively.  The presentation finishes with the projection of a 9 minutes video to give a clear overview of this event in the past experiences.