Letters in movement

On July 23rd, Museion and MART in Rovereto will present a new Public Poem by the Belgian artist and poet Alain Arias-Misson, entitled the “Public Dream Poem”. “Public Poems” are poetic actions that are performed in public, starting from a single word, in the spirit of Concrete Poetry. They are aimed at an everyday public who are surprised by the event, rather than at the kind of audience that normally frequents museums and art venues.

The first part of the Public Poem will take place in the morning at Rovereto on the road that leads to MART outside the railway station.  Seven representatives from the two museums will carry 180-centimetre-high letters that form the word SOGNARE (TO DREAM). The train will stop at three selected locations. Then, using a megaphone, Alain Arias-Misson will order the participants to change position and form other words with the same letters. Wherever possible, the words will refer to the surrounding environment. At the station in Rovereto, the group led by the poet will then get on the train for Bolzano, where they will repeat the same actions they performed in Rovereto. At the poet’s command, the letters carried by the group will change position and form other words. Similar Public Poems by the artist have been performed in recent years, for example, at Yale University in the USA, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and at the Venice Biennale.