Monday, August 15, 2011

Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone

In a park in Armenia, Colombia, there was a performance called "El que esté libre de pecado que tire la primera piedra" ("Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone"). During the performance, an artist stripped nude and stood in front of a tree, as waiting for the stones to be thrown at him. Later on, he handed something (I'm not sure what, soap?).

During the performance, a reporter was completely outraged. He could not stop staring and yelling: "This is immoral! This might be a homosexual act!". Sure, the reporter showed a lot of ignorance and intolerance (and even homophobia) with his reaction, but wasn't that the point? To provoke, to bring those demons out of the human mind and expose them just as the artist exposed his body.

The reporter held his cell phone just as if he was holding the stone. Perhaps the modern stone is the cell phone used to throw the public forces against everything that we cannot accept.

Perhaps without this reaction the performance would have missed its mark. The sin wouldn't have been exposed. Intolerance, fear, repression, ignorance. Homophobia, but why homophobia? What is homosexual about a nude body? Perhaps the reporter becomes homosexual when he takes his clothes off to shower in the morning? Or does he shower with his eyes closed?

So, the video is obviously in Spanish, but the language of gestures is universal enough.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Juan,

    Please excuse me as I know this is not the proper place to do that, but I would like to thank you for a spanish subtitle posted at podnapisi. it helped me a lot to translate it to my mother language, portuguese. Once again, thank you very much.

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  2. "Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone"

    Amen. :)

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