I have a nightmare

The performance speech on the town hall square of Copenhagen on 13 December 2002

I have a nightmare that started as a dream.
-A dream in which we broke down the Berlin Wall with our bare hands, because we wanted to build a world that did not separate white from red.
-A dream in which the dictatorship of communism was replaced by the freedom of capitalism.
-A dream in which injustice and corruption were to be fought and replaced by justice and equality.
-A dream in which we spoke of the termination of the evil empire and the overwhelming victory of the western civilization.
-A dream in which we agreed that the world is too small to contain its own imbalance, and therefore had to be regulated with good liberal assets.

But the dream transforms into a nightmare.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

A nightmare
-Where we are beginning to build a new wall around the western civilization, this time to separate the poor from the rich.
-Where we, for each brick we lay, simultaneously decline a piece of our human decency.
-Where we close the borders of Europe for the hungry refugees that have suffered from war. Because we claim not to afford taking care of them.
-Where we outwardly preach tolerance and the love of mankind, but inwardly practice intolerance and brutalisation.
-Where we claim our rights to defile the Earth in the biggest orgy of consumption in the history of the world. At the same time we preach on others to exercise moderation.
Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

A nightmare that begins as a whisper but ends as a thunder - A nightmare
-Where we slowly forget that the Danish patriotism we praised, was build on freedom, equality and brotherhood.
-Where we started sporadically by rejecting dark-skinned people from our nightclubs, but ended up erecting signs saying "for whites only".
-Where concepts as immigrant, refugee and "new-Dane", will be replaced by pariahs, scroungers and inner enemies.
-Where the brotherhood only stretches as far, as to people with the same skin colour as mine.
-Where brother becomes enemy and sister becomes informer.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

I have a nightmare
-Where the Earth shrinks, but the imbalance is upheld.
-Where we started to send people that wanted to use us back over the wall, but end up sending persecuted people to their deaths, because they are fighting for freedom, equality and brotherhood.
-Where children are being born and die from starvation behind the wall, and we are of the opinion that it is their own fault.
-Where we sit under the shelter of the wall, jerking off to our fortune.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP! I have a nightmare
-Where freedom only is for those that think as I do.
-Where only a few are equal and lots are unequal.
-Where women is something you use to keep hold of your house.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

I have a nightmare
-Where there are more policemen than social workers.
-Where anti-humanism has replaced humanism.
-Where display of power is part of the solution, not the problem.
-Where we prohibit the poor in producing their own medicine, because we have taken out the patent for it, and where we see them die from the disease, the medicine could have cured them for.

I have a nightmare
-Where sex is an abomination and propagation has developed to a technological nightmare taking place at research centres with test-tubes and genetic manipulation.
-Where we have taken out patent for native peoples' genes and medicine, and prohibiting them in using the medicine that they have been using for centuries.
-Where imaginative literature is considered as romanticism and real reading occurs in reading technical books.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

I have a nightmare
-Where love between man and woman has been replaced by career-contracts.
-Where children are not raised by loving parents, but in institutes of learning and social correct behaviour.
-Where our need for human contact and emotional relations will be satisfied by talk-shows hosting celebrities.
-Where most of our great experiences come from the reality-shows of our TV-channels.
-Where we feel insecure passing through areas without constant video surveillance.
-Where we from anxiety for death, technologically keep our elder alive, so that we have institutions with millions of demented zombies.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

I have a nightmare
-Where names as Grundtvig, Gandhi and Mandela will be replaced by names as Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.
-Where powerful men are met with admiration instead of scepticism.
-Where we started making reality-shows on live television, where we made a group of people marginalize each other in the most devious way, and ended up making the winning super-asshole our president.
-Where we out of fear for terrorism destroying our democracy, chose to commit political suicide and introduced the overcontrolled society.
-Where every opposition that talked about honouring humanism and sharing the world, was considered potential terrorists and eliminated.

I have a nightmare
-Where our scientists are trying to produce the perfect human, and consider the rest for failures.
-Where we find the gene for unreasonable children, and will produce children that do not waste any time on playing, but from the age of day-care will be able to gain technological knowledge.
-Where it is positive to be similar a negative to be different.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

I have a nightmare
-Where we live on an Earth in ecological decay, because we chose to earn money instead of nursing the resources.

I have a nightmare
-Where the school will narrow instead of widen the horizon.
-Where the individual is nothing and the government is all.
-Where art is used to manipulate and rectify.
-Where marching is better than playing.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

I have a nightmare
-Where tolerance is replaced by intolerance.
-Where love for life is replaced by love for the country.
-Where freedom of speech is replaced by self-censorship.

I have a nightmare
-Where shaved men in uniforms will censor, what men with stubbles and morning-hair have created.
-Where we let ourselves entertain by inane TV-shows, while the world is bleeding to death.
-Where the golden days of fascism in Europe only was the beginning and not the end.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

I have a nightmare
-Where man will look back at our age and consider us sentimental fools and dreamers.
-Where our expenses to military supersedes our expenses to education.

I have a nightmare
-Where concepts like individual rights have been reduced to the right to beat your children and rape your wife.
-Where concepts like "the social being" is being replaced by "the disciplined being".
-Where we have a world that endorses supermen and despises democrats.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

I have a nightmare
-Where we believe in toughness and find softness despicable.
-Where we support death penalty because the system is infallible.
-Where the perfect man eats the genetic manipulated and life-expanding food.

I have a nightmare
-Where the poor on the other side of the wall will sell their organs in order to prolong our lives.
-Where there is more room for occupants in prisons than in the hospitals.
-Where political prisoners and torture is not only happening abroad.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

I have a nightmare
-Where we will follow an unmerciful antichrist and claim him a god.
-Where the inner beast has taken over.
-Where it has buried its black snout deeply into the Danish soil, and taken over every soul in this country.
-Where we in the end became fascists because we would not share the resources of the earth.

Hit it, listen to the beat, feel the heat (drums/fire) STOP!

A lot of fire and drums

*********************** All light goes out ************************



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    2002: The Nightmare
    Additional Information:
    Categories: 2002: The Nightmare | Happenings and Art Installations | Performances / Scenographies | Activities related to environment and climate
    Sculptures: Fenris Wolf, big | Fenris Wolf, small | Masks of the Pillar of Shame | Monopoly Money | My inner Beast - concrete | Pillar of Shame
    Type: Documents
    Dates: 10th December 2002
    Locations: Town hall square, Copenhagen, Denmark
    Co-operators and Helpers: Andreas Dybkjær | Brandvæsenet i Aalborg | Carl Quist Møller | Hans Børsting | Ib Frendø | Jonathan Paul Cook | Kasper Markus | Krakagården | Leif Müller | Martin Craggs | Martin Liljendal | Mogens Rex
    Partners: ATTAC Copenhagen
    Sponsors: BB Hydraulik | Emmeløv Mølle (Biodiesel) | Havnens Autogenbrug, Odense | Weishaupt