But picketing - picketing for or against something, and handing

Host: The city night hummed with the low static of tension — that strange, electric quiet that comes after shouting fades but before silence fully settles. A few damp flyers clung to the sidewalk outside the old art gallery, their ink smudged from rain and conviction. Neon light bled across the wet pavement in streaks of red and blue, painting reflections of a world that never quite agreed with itself.

Inside, under the flickering hum of fluorescent bulbs, Jack and Jeeny stood among half-dismantled installations — sculptures of wire, paper, protest signs, and static-filled televisions playing loops of people marching. On one screen, a phrase scrolled endlessly: “Indirect Communication.”

Between them, written in bold letters on the back of a discarded placard, was the quote of the night:
“But picketing — picketing for or against something, and handing out literature — these are conspicuously formal actions. They have to be understood as indirect communication.” — Tony Conrad

Jeeny: “It’s brilliant, isn’t it? The idea that protest isn’t just expression, but performance. A kind of art installation with consequences.”

Jack: “Or a ritual of futility. You stand in the rain, wave a sign, and call it change. Conrad’s right — it’s indirect. It’s communication once removed, shouting through a pane of glass.”

Host: The projector light cut across Jack’s face, rendering half of it in sharp illumination and the other in shadow. His voice carried the weary rhythm of someone who’d believed in movements once — and been burned by them.

Jeeny: “Indirect doesn’t mean ineffective. It means layered. Symbolic. The act of picketing isn’t supposed to solve something — it’s supposed to signal something. Like semaphore — one soul waving to another across distance.”

Jack: “Sure. But what happens when the distance becomes the whole point? When we mistake the symbol for the substance? Holding a sign feels righteous, but it doesn’t dismantle the structure it condemns.”

Jeeny: “But it starts the dismantling. Communication isn’t construction, Jack — it’s ignition.”

Host: Her eyes shone, alive with conviction, like streetlights through fog. She walked slowly toward one of the installations — a metal frame wrapped in newspaper and protest tape — and touched it lightly, the paper crackling under her fingers.

Jeeny: “Conrad saw picketing as art because it’s performance framed by society’s gaze. Protestors are actors on the street stage. Every gesture is choreography, every word part of a larger dialogue. It’s not about the message alone — it’s about how it’s delivered.”

Jack: “You make politics sound poetic.”

Jeeny: “It is. Every protest is a poem written in footsteps and rain.”

Jack: “Then why does poetry so rarely change laws?”

Jeeny: “Because poetry changes people first. And people change laws later.”

Host: The wind pressed against the old windows, rattling them like the whisper of history demanding to be heard. Jack moved toward a torn banner that read “LISTEN HARDER.” He stared at it, then at Jeeny.

Jack: “You really think people listen? Most of the time, protest just divides. It becomes noise, spectacle — the kind of thing Conrad was warning about. Indirect communication means miscommunication. The more dramatic the gesture, the easier it is to ignore the nuance.”

Jeeny: “That’s where art and protest share the same wound — both can be misunderstood. But misunderstanding isn’t failure, it’s friction. It forces attention.”

Jack: “Or fatigue. There’s a thin line between awareness and burnout.”

Jeeny: “But that’s not the fault of the gesture — it’s the fault of the audience.”

Host: She picked up one of the scattered flyers, its ink running slightly in her hands. The words were still visible: “Silence = Consent.” She held it out like an artifact.

Jeeny: “You see this? This isn’t direct communication either. It’s metaphor. Every protest, every leaflet, every chant — they’re mirrors, not microphones. They reflect what we believe back at ourselves.”

Jack: “So it’s self-therapy?”

Jeeny: “No. It’s self-realization.”

Jack: “That sounds dangerously close to indulgence.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe it’s necessary indulgence. You can’t change the world if you can’t first imagine yourself inside it differently.”

Host: A train horn echoed faintly in the distance, the sound warping as it passed through the damp air — another kind of signal, another form of indirect communication.

Jack: “Maybe that’s why he called it formal. It’s structured performance, not spontaneous truth. You hold a sign not because you expect the world to turn, but because you need to prove to yourself that you’re still turning with it.”

Jeeny: “That’s not weakness. That’s affirmation. Protest isn’t conversation — it’s punctuation. A way of saying: We are still here.”

Jack: “And after the punctuation comes silence.”

Jeeny: “No. After it comes echo.”

Host: The flickering light caught her face, and for a moment, her eyes seemed to burn brighter than the room itself. She stepped closer to Jack, her voice lower now — the kind of tone one uses when articulating belief that costs something.

Jeeny: “You think Conrad was cynical. But I think he was fascinated — he saw protest as a form of avant-garde communication. Like his music — repetitive, minimalist, precise. Every repetition of the chant, every step of the march, a rhythm. Protest as performance art. Art as moral noise.”

Jack: “Maybe that’s what bothers me — that it’s noise. Every group shouting at once, every cause fighting for signal space. There’s no harmony anymore — just feedback.”

Jeeny: “But even feedback has purpose. It tells you the system’s still on.”

Jack: “Until it fries the speakers.”

Jeeny: “And then someone rebuilds them. Louder.”

Host: The projector whirred, its filmstrip looping one last time. On the screen, slow-motion footage of a crowd appeared — people holding signs, rain falling, mouths open mid-chant. Their faces blurred into abstraction — emotion distilled into shape and motion.

Jack: “You think they knew anyone was listening?”

Jeeny: “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they spoke.”

Jack: “You think speaking into silence is enough?”

Jeeny: “It’s how every revolution begins — one voice misheard, repeated until it’s understood.”

Host: The light flickered and died, plunging the gallery into the soft darkness of aftermath. Only the glow of the city outside remained — restless, indifferent, alive.

Jack: “Maybe that’s what Conrad meant — that protest, like art, is translation. Imperfect, indirect, but necessary. We can’t touch each other directly anymore. Everything’s mediated. Words, screens, distance. So we find new ways to gesture.”

Jeeny: “And every gesture, however small, becomes history’s handwriting.”

Host: The silence that followed was charged — not empty, but vibrating with the hum of ideas unspoken.

Jeeny: “You know, I think the real art isn’t the protest itself — it’s the persistence. The willingness to repeat the same gesture, even when no one claps.”

Jack: “Like theater with no audience.”

Jeeny: “Or prayer with no god.”

Host: The rain began again, soft and rhythmic against the windows, like applause from a patient universe. Jack looked around the shadowed room one last time.

Jack: “You ever think maybe indirect communication is all we’ve got left?”

Jeeny: “Maybe it always was. Maybe that’s what it means to be human — to stand in the storm with a sign, knowing no one will understand completely, and do it anyway.”

Host: The neon light from the street cast their reflections side by side on the gallery’s glass door — two blurred figures framed in color and rain, symbols of the conversation itself: formal, fleeting, indirect, but undeniably alive.

And as they stepped out into the damp night, Tony Conrad’s words hummed between them — not as cynicism, but as revelation:

that communication itself is an art of distance,
that protest is a ritual of translation,
and that even the most imperfect gesture
still carries the most perfect truth —
the refusal to be silent.