ARcTic TALK

April 2025 — ARcTic TALK. Role: performer.
Text in Polish: chmiola.com/arctic-talk-pl
Text in English: chmiola.com/arctic-talk-eng
Text in Italian: chmiola.com/arctic-talk-it

A 14-minute spoken performance carried out opposite Milan Cathedral in Piazza del Duomo on 4.04.2025. ARcTic TALK is a poetic-critical intervention in public space, combining reflection on the climate with an analysis of urban excess and the aestheticization of inequality. As an ice cube the size of a human heart melted, the artist spoke for those who remain unseen — between ice and clay, between community and the loss of place. The event was streamed live and made available in Italian and English translations.

performative text / site-specific / poetic and critical / artivist action

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I.

– ICE – SPACE THAT IS MELTING
(The performer stands over the ice.)

This is no monument
no marble of Piazza Duomo
no granite
no steel
It is ice

The Arctic’s breath held briefly in a form

A cube
A momentary figure of silence
But beneath the surface
air from the ice age
Inside — fractures
as if the ice wanted to say something

Every inhalation is a decision

There is no wind in Milan
There are PM10, NO2, O3
letters that do not form words
but write the future of illness

Cars stand like figures of concrete
yet they are not silent
Noise knows no red light

The ice melts faster than the data in reports
faster than the patience of people
stuck in traffic on Viale Forlanini
It melts like social housing in San Siro
like the dream of clean air in Porta Romana

Ice is not only cold
It is what falls silent when no one listens
It is what vanishes before you notice it was there

In 1898, there were people here who received no bread
They received a bullet
From the San Giovanni bridge, guns were aimed at the defenceless
The cathedral watched in silence

Today that hunger has changed its face
it is the absence of silence
the absence of shade
the absence of a tree
the absence of a home
the absence of safety
the absence of a voice for those in need

Hunger for a community
that cannot afford the rent
Hunger for rest
that granite squares do not give

It is a hunger for “here”
Not everyone has one
A melting “here”

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II.

I – COLUMN – THE CITY’S BODY / I
(The performer shapes a column from clay and places it on the melting cube of ice.)

The city has a body
“I” as in a column
“I” as in a performer
“I” as in the vertical between ice and letter

Milan was built from hands
and from dust
From brick, dust, industry, loans and promises
From moves
from migrations
from forgotten neighbourhoods

But clay cannot bear haste
cannot bear feigned equality

I shape it from what is still malleable
from clay that remembers fingers
Not from marble
not from luxury
from need

This column wants to bear the city
but the city does not want to be light

There are neighbourhoods here bursting with prestige
and neighbourhoods crumbling in silence
Gentrification is a new word for an old displacement

Luxury is built on this clay

But boundaries are not always on maps
Isola, before it was fashionable
Niguarda, before it ceased to be visible
Bovisa, before it was smoothed over

There are ruins in this clay too
Leoncavallo — the threatened home of a social centre
Walls covered in spray paint
not noise, but a manifesto
not a party — but a form of survival

I shape it from forgotten languages
from the mats of migrants who arrived here by train at Stazione Centrale
and have no time for architecture
From the colour of hands on the green metro line
from the silence in the eyes of people absent from the smart city briefing

In the clay is what no one exhibits at Expo
Clay is a language
not polished Italian
but the dialect of building sites, night shifts and permesso di soggiorno

Inside
microfractures
As in the structure of the city
as in friendships that end at the rent

And perhaps here
in this clay, in this emptiness
there is also an echo of the table in the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie
Ostatnia Wieczerza (The Last Supper)
without bread
without light
with Judas and without a voice
with hands that do not touch
with a body about to disappear
with the stranger who is you, whom you deny a place at the table

Does anything here still take the imprint of a hand?

Here people steal because there is no way in
Because there is no invitation inside
Because expectations grow faster than opportunities
And shop windows know no hunger

Here a metro ticket is folded into six parts
and no one will tell you, because money can be made from it
Here honesty can be a luxury
and the law — a decoration at the entrance

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III.

m – LETTER – VOICE / EXCESS / REMAINDER
(The performer places the letter M on the column, on the ice that is melting.
Everything slowly sinks. The clay mixes with the meltwater. A sign remains.)

The letter “m”
Not “M” as in monument
A small “m” — from a 3D printer
Made of plastic
of intention
of the need to speak
But also of the need to produce
To produce excess

Of the need to display oneself
Of the need to be seen through a shop window
Style — not as language, but as echo
A new message every season, the same emptiness

“m” — like a trace that does not disappear
like plastic in soil
like a label that will outlast generations
like art that has no weight, only takes up space
like art that has no meaning, only appearance
Are we allowed to make such art today?
Like an exhibition that repeats another catalogue
like a document with no addressee
like the word “I am” that someone has immortalised

“M” as in Milano
“M” as in Miglioramento — Improvement?
“M” as in Maska — a mask put on for every walk
“M” as in Monopol — a monopoly over land, water, dreams
“M” as in Miejsce — a place melting in your hands
“M” as in Miasto — a city that says there is no room
“M” as in Marsz — a march of people without keys
“M” as in Mamona — Mammon
“M” as in Matka — Mother
“M” as in Miłość — love for a city that does not want you

Napoleon — here, in the cathedral
not the city
not the people
not the community
God
“And woe to whoever touches it”

But today everything is melting
Even the sanctity of power
even the foundations of the square
even the certainty of where we are

Today that crown does not shine
Today only the window of an apartment without inhabitants shines

Instead of placing “M” on a pedestal —
I lower it
Let it touch the ground
let it meet the paving stones
that remember blood
and the traces of shoes
and the tears of those who left this place

Because the city needs no more height
It needs no marble
It needs balance

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IV.

I’m – ENDING
 – ice that disappears
I – I, column, vertical, voice
m – sign, plastic, afterimage, excess

I’m
I am
Between
Not above

I do not crown
I do not erect a monument
I do not demand attention

ARcTic TALK
Not a manifesto
Not a rally
Not marketing

Only a conversation
With ice
with clay
with the square
with you