The Line, A Political Allegory

We live in a world where messages are rarely just words. Power, ideology, and identity all affect how we send, receive, and interpret information. In politics, communication is rarely neutral, and never universal. My artistic video project, The Line, seeks to explore this idea through a simple, yet deeply symbolic action.

In the video, a group people stands in a line, each facing the back of the one in front. The first person creates a message. This message is both verbal and physical: a whisper, a tap, a rhythm, a sound. Then, the message travels down the line. But there’s a twist: each participant is given a particular constraint, a personal condition, a role to perform that alters how they can perceive or pass the message.

One can’t use their arms. Another is instructed to behave as a child. A third person has to imagine living with autism. Another is deaf. One only speaks a language no one else understands. One must interpret everything literally. One is blindfolded. One is constantly interrupted. Each person lives in a slightly different world, a reality shaped by physical, psychological, social, or linguistic limitations.

The result? The message arrives distorted. Sometimes slightly changed. Sometimes entirely unrecognizable. The last person receives something completely different from what was originally sent. But this is not a failure. This is the message.

This chain of altered perception represents how political messages. Laws, policies, speeches, are transmitted across a society. Governments and institutions often build ideas or rules assuming that they will reach all citizens in the same way, but that is an illusion. People experience the world through different bodies, minds, and contexts.

Equality is not sameness.

The Line is not just a game of transmission. It is a reflection on representation, accessibility, and inclusion. The original message might have been 'stand still,' but by the time it gets to someone without legs, or someone who doesn’t understand the words, 'stand still' becomes meaningless, or even violent. What may seem like a fair rule for one can be impossible for another. Each person in the line becomes both a filter and a mirror. They transmit, but they also transform. Like political systems. Like media. Like education. And just like in politics, nobody is neutral. We all filter meaning through who we are, our limitations, our privileges, our wounds. Our histories. Our traumas. Our dreams.

The last person in the line doesn’t just hear a message. They inherit a chain of distortions, misinterpretations, silences, and inventions. This is how politics works in real life, by the time the policy reaches the person who needs it most, it’s often no longer what it was meant to be.

The Line also reveals how exclusion is built into the system. If one person cannot understand the message, the whole chain begins to crumble. It is not enough to speak loudly or clearly. We must speak accessibly, with awareness of our audience’s realities.

The project is a metaphor, but also a reminder and a warning. There is no such thing as a perfect message. No political slogan, law, or reform will ever fit all bodies, all minds, all hearts. This is not pessimism. This is a call for complexity. For awareness. For empathy. For designing policies with flexibility and compassion.

In a world that values clarity, The Line celebrates the messy truth: that misunderstanding is not just a flaw, it is a sign of our diversity. And perhaps the solution is not to find the 'right' message, but to create a society where differences are not obstacles, but starting points. Where listening matters more than transmitting.