Portal of CommitmentSophie WolfInstallation • 2020Leipzig, Palmengarten
With a sense of relief, step through the portal into a parallel universe, in which your decision to commit to an aspect of social change becomes an indisputable fact. You may remain in this new world forever. If, however, you come to realize you cannot hold the commitment you thought you could, the portal allows you to return to the world you came from.
Sound piece with excerpts taken from online talks, interviews and video calls, most of which took place in April and May 2020, with writers and activists Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Imani Perry, Robert Paul Wolff and Assad Rehman
"Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it." - Arundhati Roy, The Pandemic is a Portal
Sources:
The Pandemic is a Portal
Online Teach-In with Arundhati Roy and Imani Perry, April 23 2020
youtu.be/QmQLTnK4QTA
A Global Green New Deal: Into the Portal, Leave No one Behind
Online Talk with Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein and Assad Rehman, May 19 2020
youtu.be/w0NY1_73mHY
Interview with Arundhati Roy: It’s Hard to Communicate the Scale and the Shape of This Shadow Taking India Over, November 28 2019
www.democracynow.org/2019/11/28/arundhati_roy_it_s_hard_to