Object number2023.30
What is Poetry to You?
Date1980
Artist
Cecilia Vicuña
(Chilean, born 1948)
CultureChilean
Medium16mm film transferred to video; duration: 23 minutes 20 seconds
EditionEdition 3 of 5, plus 2 artist's proofs
DimensionsRunning Time: 23.33 minutes (1,399.8 seconds)
Credit LinePurchase, gift of Mrs. Frederick Ferris Thompson, by exchange
On View
Not on viewPeriodChilean
Classification(s)
Vassar Exhibitions
Label TextIn What is Poetry to You?, poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña turns inquiry into chorus in the streets of Bogotá, Colombia. The film circulates a question through voices as verse with writers, children, workers, and passersby forming an impromptu parliament. From Monserrate to the salsatheque, Vicuña gathers answers that range from bourgeois to revolutionary, fierce animal to inner tenderness, and distraction to divine art. Wordless sequences and establishing shots punctuate the interviews: Vicuña wanders the mountaintop; the city pulses below after dusk. Such moments suggest that poetry resides beyond speech—in breath, rhythm, atmosphere. Made while living in exile from Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, Vicuña later reflected, “forced by the censorship, I became an oral poet”—and here film becomes refuge for voices that could not carry, threading what might otherwise be lost into collective song.
DescriptionVideo of the artist going to villages in Chile and asking people "what is poetry to you?"
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Gordon Matta-Clark
1971-1972
Culture: American
