benjamin lundberg torres sánchez

for our sake, not the wind’s
Video performance. (2020)

for our sake, not the wind’s is a short, poetic video-performance that resists reproductive-futurism, or the idea that political action should be motivated by the desire for creating better futures for children, rather than working to improve conditions for people in the here and now. As a dream, invitation, and declaration, this message affirms the agency and autonomy of all people, including children, and imagines worlds free of family regulation systems (prisons, borders, child protective services, foster care, and specifically, here, adoption.)

Text:

Broadcasting from the temporal collapse
This is the decentralized coalition against the future
Do not be afraid
This is an invitation
Against contingency. Against control.
What we whisper into the next moment
Are children           belonging only to themselves
A thousand tiny droplets:
Free selves. And many.
To root, drift, mutate, grow, flourish
We find the ghosts of future generations
Keep us, and others, from the urgent now
No one has the right to children
No desire, coin, state, body, fortune, trauma
Could justify
Closing our hands on best laid plans
As if we could gently pluck the air from another’s body
And breathe it as our own
For our sake, not the wind’s