On a rooftop, a single arm extends over the edge of a building—a cast of Dries Verhoeven’s own. From a megaphone in its grip, a voice breaks into the street: a reading of ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ by Dylan Thomas. Sometimes defiant, sometimes weary, the delivery shifts between urgency, despair, and quiet resignation.

This temporary public intervention, co-commissioned by De Balie and presented within the context of the Forum on European Culture, stages a poetic call to resistance in a moment when political and ecological collapse shapes daily reality. Passersby encounter the work unexpectedly—a disembodied voice hovering over the street—inviting them to pause and consider what forms of defiance remain meaningful in an age of cynicism and fatigue.

Verhoeven positions the work in dialogue with the aesthetics of protest: raised fists, slogans, chanting crowds. But instead of a rally, there is an ambiguous gesture—a fragile arm, a single poem, a wavering voice. It hovers between sincere appeal and symbolic futility, asking whether artistic expression can still unsettle power, or whether it has become a comfortable ritual of dissent.

“Can we, as artists, truly act against dictatorial regimes, tech billionaires, and warmongers responsible for genocide? At times, I find the idea rather preposterous. Aren’t we compromised by the very systems in which we move? The political stance in the arts is not only necessary, but also rather fashionable these days, sometimes becoming almost gratuitous. The art viewer, having taken part, may walk away feeling virtuous, their conscience soothed by a moment of enlightenment. Do such gestures really challenge tyranny, or do they merely comfort the cultural middle class? And—this question is closest to my heart—what about the value of ambiguity? Can art, which draws its strength from multiplicity of meaning, be an effective medium of resistance?” — Dries Verhoeven

Do not go gentle into that good night is both a performance and an object—a quiet yet piercing intervention that probes the tension between activism and spectacle, protest and poetry, conviction and doubt.