If you want to be called Human- Tasos Leivaditis (GR)- Marc Neys (Belgium)

Concept, direction, music, camera & editing: Marc Neys
Footage: Jan Eerala
Voice: Michael Dickes
Poem: Tasos Livaditis

Marc Neys (aka Swoon / No One) (°1968, Essen, Belgium) is a video-artist / composer. “His work is provocative, beautiful and disturbing. Using words as guidelines, Marc Neys creates video and soundscapes using a blend of layered images. His work is instantly recognizable for the skill with which he extracts new meaning from the words he illuminates. Image, sound, voice combine seamlessly to create something fresh, and often startling in Swoon’s work.” (Erica Goss)
He has released four CD’s over the the last three years and was one of the leading figures in European videopoetry between 2012 and 2018. His works have been featured at film festivals all over the world
https://marc-neys.bandcamp.com/music
https://vimeo.com/swoon

Michal Dickes: Michael Dickes is a painter, writer, songwriter and composer from the small towns of Washington’s Cascade Mountains, now living in NYC.
https://www.michaeldickes.com/

Jan Eerala: photographer, visual artist and a sound artist from Finland.
https://soundcloud.com/holotna
http://www.eerala.com/weblog/

Tasos Leivaditis:
Leivaditis’ poetry remained largely unknown outside his native land until the 1983 publication in English of his collection The Blind Man with the Lamp simultaneously to its publication in Greece. Critics found that despite his presumed beliefs, Leivaditis’ poetry dealt with the metaphysical in a way that went beyond materialism. A reviewer stated that Leivaditis’ poems although “merciless confrontations with the real” are “no monochrome paean to resignation” but read as
“essentially elegies for existence.

If you want to be called human by Tasos Leivaditis

If you want to be called human
you won’t stop,not even for a minute, fighting for peace and for justice.
You will go out to the streets, you’ll scream, your lips will bleed from the screams,
your face will bleed from the bullets, but not even a step backwards.
Your every scream, a rock at the warmongers windows
Your every movement like you knock down the injustice.
And be careful: don’t forget even for a minute.
For a little while to remember your childhood years
You leave a thousand of children to be broken apart
when they play unsuspecting in the states
one moment if you look at the sunrise
tomorrow people will be vanished in the night of war
if you stop, for a minute, in order to dream
millions of people’s dreams will become dust under the shells
You don’t have time
you don’t have time for yourself
if you want to be called human.
If you want to be called human
you might need to leave your mother, your lover or your child.
You will not hesistate.
You will deny your lamp and your bread
you will deny the night rest at the homemade treshold
for a rough road that leads to tomorrow.
You will not retard and you will not fear of anything.
I know, it’s beautiful hearing one harmonica at night, to look one star,
to dream
it’s beautiful leaned up the red mouth of your love
to hear her telling her dreams about the future.
But you have to say goodbye to all that and begin
because you are responsible for all the harmonicas of the world,
for all the stars for all the lamps and all the dreams
if you want to be called human.
If you want to be called human
you might need to be closed in prison for twenty or much more years
but you even inside the prison you will always
remember the spring, your mother and the world
You, even from the inside of your square meter of your cell
will keep your road up in the earth
And, when in the infinite silence, in the night
you will knock with your finger the wall your cell
from the other side of the wall Spain will answer you
You, even if you see your years to go by and your hair getting white
you won’t get old…
You, even inside the prison every morning, will wake up even younger
because even younger wars will start in the world
if you want to be called human.
If you want to be called human.
You have to be willing to die any morning.
From the night to the isolation you will write
a big touching letter to your mother
you will right to the wall the date, the acronyms
of your name and one word: Peace
as if you were writing the whole story of your life.
To be able to die any morning.
To be able to stand in front of six rifles
as if you were standing in front of the whole future
to be able, up in the broadside that kills,
to hear millions of simple people that
they are fighting for peace while singing…
If you want to be called human.