Cinematic Poetry
1616 ~ Night Watch: The Delft Riots
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1616 ~ Night Watch: Delft Riots Hear the pattering hope drop of this child's feet, On the cold mercy of a stone street, The madness flies at the window, Mourn the passing phase of their sanity, Gone with heaped and hollowed willful praise of sweet patural days. We've fed up of their mercy, For mercy they made our conditions necessary, No accountancy made for the land we built in honesty, For the people's liberty. For us all to feast, From home. When the crop is cast from it's tall stalks, Growth is cut to splintered corn, And laid again the foundations of the house we built, But where was law? Scratched from the parables of their orthodox, As scythe lays in quiet by the cross, For ideals have more words than those who work to get it done, Those that do and make and win for nations, Until the nation is one. When the people's barter was freed by the economy of prosperity, The land; yellow in corn like sleeping lions, Dancing women sung, For their supper's granted, And hair flowed free in wind blown golden sun.
The Collector’s Edition
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An adaptation of The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn, placing the celebrated civic militia within the unrest surrounding the 1616 Delft corn riots. Rembrandt's original painting presents the militia as a confident symbol of civic order ~ a disciplined formation stepping forward beneath the light of mercantile stability. Yet beneath this image of harmony lay a more fragile reality. In 1616, riots broke out in Delft after authorities imposed a new tax on corn. As prices rose and the burden of policy fell upon ordinary citizens, the agreement between rulers and the ruled began to fracture. The civic guard stood between the population and the decisions of those who governed them. Across centuries the pattern repeats. In this adaptation, Rembrandt's militia no longer represents unquestioned order. They stand at the threshold between authority and uprising ~ witnesses to the moment when a society realizes that stability itself has become uncertain. 1616 Collection exhibited at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam ~ Google Gemini Art Remix Competition. Poetry & AI Animation & Music & Produced & Performed by Laurence Fuller.
