Poetic gem by Ed Atkins knows exactly how to strike a chord

That he prefers not to hear news about the weather, but that there were once people alive who he knew, and what the weather was like then, Ed Atkins cannot talk about that often enough. So he repeats that phrase endlessly. A 'loop', then, as we know it from music and video art. But performed live.

Is that possible, yes. Is that beautiful? Also. Heartbreaking, even. The poem he reads is Gilbert Sorrentino's The Morning Roundup from 1971. Whether it refers to actual people? It doesn't matter: it's enough to know that 1971 was an extremely eventful year in the US.

Ed Atkins is best known as a video artist, and I had not yet had the opportunity to become acquainted with his work. So Eptitaph, the 45-minute poem he recited at Frascati, was my first.

And what a first. The constant repetition of the text makes it more than a poem, but because he also constantly chooses a different intonation, it evolves from a text exercise for a stage actor into a dramatic attempt by a human being to keep a memory, and the feeling that goes with it, alive. A doomed attempt, of course, and then music is the only thing that can offer solace.

So that music comes, first as a song he sings in a beautiful voice, then repeats the attempts with new zest. Until suddenly the whole hall seems to burst into singing. There appears to be a whole choir hidden among the audience, and that makes it all quite moving, and comforting. How powerless, too.

I don't want to hear any news on the radio
about the weather on the weekend. Talk about
that.

Once upon a time
a couple of people were alive
who were friends of mine.

The weathers, the weathers they lived in!
Christ, the sun on those Saturdays.

Atkins can be experienced again in Amsterdam thanks to the Hartwig Art Foundation, a new private museum that has appointed Beatrix Ruf as its director. Ruf was previously director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, but was fired there shortly after her appointment for allegedly having entangled interests. The decision to do so was controversial. Last night, after the end of Epitaph, she was beaming at the afterparty on the Frascati terrace.