The sign on the bison enclosure in the Berlin Zoo reads something like this.

Between the American bisons, two plus a small one, and an empty enclosure, on about one hundred or one hundred and fifty square meters of sand, in the background a pretty little brightly painted wooden house, perhaps a shelter for the beasts, perhaps a storage room for tools and equipment, there stood, motionless, two wisents: large, massive, hairy, brown, perhaps a little bored.

Symbols, simulacra, in my opinion, as well as animals of flesh, fur and blood.

Extraordinary, mysterious beings, they were there already at the time of the fairytales, even though no one has ever spoken of them.

Hidden in their forests, that are now largely gone.

Indistinct shadows, evanescent in the mist, far in the dense forest, among silhouettes of centuries-old trunks immersed in muffled silences.

These two specimens in the park in Berlin, distant, detached from a present that I imagine of noisy Sundays, children and balloons, glances distracted or winking, superficial and moved, in their indifference they appear majestic, noble, as if they were aware of their status of ultimate representatives of a past which is definitively gone (and perhaps only partially reconstructible, within narrow limits).

They would deserve much larger spaces, with trees and undergrowth to hide from the indiscreet surprise of visitors;

They are more at ease, however, in the wind of this actually rather tepid German winter, than the uncomfortable impression of strangeness one feels at the sight of the Persian gazelle, of the cheetah trotting slowly with its soft belly, and of the perfect little deep circle that the colossal white rhinoceros has drawn in its enclosure, right in front of the gates, walking always in the same direction.

Berlin, March 1993

* Białowieża Forest, a large forest complex on the border between Poland and Belarus.

Wisent, 2023 Wisent, 2023 | pencil on paper, cm 40×60

Wisent, 2023 Wisent, 2023 | coloured markers on plexiglas, cm 30×21