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On May 14, Cristóbal Bianchi, assistant professor in the School of Art and Design, along with his arts collective, Casagrande, will perform the Bombing of Poems over Rotterdam, which Poetry International commissioned two years ago. The event will take place at sunset, 21:15, over the Binnenrotte, a symbolic location for the city.
Rotterdam is the ninth performance of Casagrande’s Bombing of Poems series. It involves dropping 100,000 poems, printed as bookmarks, from a helicopter in cities that have experienced aerial bombing during military conflicts. The first performance occurred in Santiago, Chile in 2001 over La Moneda palace, which was attacked by the military junta in 1973 during the coup d’état, leading to 17 years of dictatorship. Since the experience in Chile, it has been performed in the skies over Dubrovnik (2002), Guernica (2004), Warsaw (2009), Berlin (2010), London (2012), Milan (2015), and Madrid (2018).
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Rotterdam’s Bombing of Poems is of special significance in the context of the city’s history. The performance will take place on the 85th anniversary of the bombing of Rotterdam during World War II, re-signifying the trauma and horror with poetry and socially engaged arts. Using the written word to reimagine the sky as a space of remembrance, the performance created an environment for human connection that allows individuals to process painful memories of the past. The event features a curated selection of 100 poems by 100 poets—50 from Chile and 50 from the Netherlands. Additionally, it includes five poems from students of Wolfert College and a poem by Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral to honor her life and work in the context of the 80th anniversary of her Nobel prize.
This performance is possible in part due to support from the College of Fine and Applied Arts and the Campus Research Board Arnold O. Beckman Award granted through the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation.
To learn more about the Bombing of Poems, visit Poetry International.
Poetry International team and Casagrande Art Collective: Nina te Velde, Joaquín Prieto, Julio Carrasco, Cristóbal Bianchi and Vinod Singh. Photo: Isabel Brain.