QUI DA NOI IL TEMPO NON C’E’
HERE WITH US THERE IS NO TIME

ARTISTIC INSTALLATION

Padova
Eremitani Garden
  July 18 – October 18

Municipality of Padua  –  Culture Department   –   City Museums

The afterlife might be an olive grove, where the wind arrives punctually each afternoon.

A village suspended on the tops of trees without branches, without leaves.

They are not tombs, nor nests, but unstable shelters for people who have passed on, yet still wish to confide in the living, to cast a message in a bottle into the sea, to try to grasp something that resists being caught.

In that Eden, so modest and calm, some are convinced they can hear the dead speak.

We listen to whispered voices, sorrowful, gentle, dignified, resigned, or defeated, that resemble everyday gestures.

Brief thoughts, monologues of individuals still longing to meet again. Intimate confessions, like those one might entrust to a diary or an analyst’s room, expressions of need, calls for repair, murmurs of comfort and reassurance, even while knowing no answers will come. Almost a soundscape, woven to soothe separation.

An exercise in knocking, in seeking.

“Over time, things disappear. It’s called forgetting.”

I come here every day.
I go and sit on the wooden bench beneath the crooked birch tree.

I walk along the crumbling wall.
I think of the dead.

I am convinced I hear the dead speak.
I believe that human beings
can only truly judge their lives
once they have put death behind them.

I am here
and yet, even here,
I am not.
But neither am I anywhere else.
That’s when I think
I am, and I am not.

I have nothing more to say.
I no longer take part.

Now we return to what we once were
animals living in the dark.
There is no proof that I am alive.

There is only the rain.
The rain is endless.
And the little things that once made me happy
no longer move me.

It’s not the earth I miss
it’s you I miss.
Sleep carries me away.

I no longer fear the wind.
I have roots in the ground.
I never saw Senegal,
nor New York,
but from here,
I see India.

Dear visitor, you are invited to sit beneath each tree to listen to the voices.
We recommend using headphones with your mobile phone and scanning the QR code on each tree-house to hear their thoughts.

A project by Antonio Panzuto and Alessandro Tognon