The poem that jumps the fence
Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennale
2024-2025
The poem that jumps the fenceWhat, how and where is poetry today?
The poem that jumps the fence features weekly performances on Abu Dhabi public beach and a workshop series connecting words and sand as real and symbolic material that holds our world together.
Every Sunday afternoon, part of the public beach is levelled to turn the beach into a blank page where poetry continuously appears, every week. A performer arrives with a 2 meter long stick to write a short poem on the sand, only for it to inevitably fade away. The weekly repeated ritual changes the site of rest into a site of activation through written language.
During collective workshops in collaboration with local poets and writers, participants generate text for the performances.
A public community is formed in language and ‘on the ground’.
The project addresses modes and processes of distribution, and questions what establish public space today, from analogue embodiment to ‘high tech’ disembodied developments. Sand is capital. It is the third most-used natural resource after water and air, critical to modern civilisation yet rapidly depleting. It is taken for granted and extracted worldwide. Intense economic use disturbs processes that are in principle
continuous but accelerate the end of sand rapidly, with scarcity and critical geo-political consequences as a result. Sand is a ‘building block’ in almost everything. Armies of sand have built our houses, our cities, paved our roads, created our beaches and entirely new lands, have shown us distant stars and subatomic particles, given birth to the Internet. It is a crucial material in oil fracking processes, it is in our computers and is the key component of our mobile phones that are the symbol and pillar of our digital age. It makes our way of life possible. Our civilisation depends on it.
Sand is everywhere. We cannot do without. It is linked to everything. This public beach is symbol and reality. Artificially created, claimed land.
see here for the growing archive of weekly performances
Workshops led by Fatima Al Jarman, Maitha AlSuwaidi, Rawad Raidan, Robert Deguzman, Trixie Balangao, Shamma Al Bastaki,] Deepak Unnikrishan. Performers: Carlos Páez González, Jamal Mahmoud Hussin, Mary Chase, Stephanie Tadros, Ayah Mokhalalati, Kangying Cen. Project coordination: Yoonsik Chico Park.