The Work
When If Not Now
Zeitgeist 2026 — L'Edizione Aurea
- Year
- 2026
- Medium
- Bronze — Edition of 8
- Dimensions
- 75 × 85 × 36 cm
This is a time in which human values are under pressure, power is being abused ever more openly, and extreme ideas are beginning to sound normal again. In such a time, apathy can be understandable, but it has consequences.
The figure is crouching. He is low to the ground, in a posture that could go either way. Is he sinking further down, or is he about to stand up? He looks into his elbow, as if he does not want to face the world, as if he does not dare to. Or is he perhaps secretly looking after all?
His body is built up from facets. The polished bronze surfaces reflect the world around you. The viewer can see themselves reflected in them. As a result, the sculpture is not only about "the other". It is also about us. About the moments when we look away, freeze, rationalise, or wait for someone else to take responsibility.
That reflection is essential. Extreme ideas do not grow only because of the people who actively want them. They are given space when enough others withdraw, adapt, or remain silent. Dehumanisation rarely begins with one great leap. It begins with habituation, with polluted language, cynicism, fatigue, and no longer wanting to know.
And yet there is a counter-movement in the sculpture.
Despite his posture, the figure stretches out one arm. He offers his hand. That hand is the only part of the body that is not faceted. The hand is lifelike.
It is an outstretched hand. In any case, contact is still possible. Someone is still needed to take that hand, so that he can stand up and stand beside the other.
Zeitgeist 26 — When If Not Now is about recognition, not condemnation. There is understanding for retreating, for not wanting to know for a moment, or for not knowing how to act. It searches for the moment when apathy can turn into moral responsibility.
Resistance to dehumanisation does not begin with grand words, but with a simple gesture: helping someone to their feet, standing beside someone, refusing to leave another person alone.
For the Zeitgeist series, Marc Pos read, spoke and travelled, always with his gaze directed towards other art forms: dance, music, theatre, sculpture and philosophy.
In February 2026, he attended rehearsals of WINN in Hamburg with choreographer John Neumeier. During those rehearsals, Pos suddenly saw a posture pass by that touched on something he had been looking for: a body low to the ground, turned inward, but not completely closed off.
He distilled that posture and asked dancer Marijn Rademaker to serve, as it were, as a model. He explored that one frozen movement further, which ultimately resulted in this sculpture.
The Artist
Marc Pos
Marc Pos is a Dutch director and artist. He has developed and directed a wide range of national and international productions for television, streamers, theatre and live performance.
In recent years, he has become known as the creator of The Traitors, the psychological reality format that has grown into a global phenomenon and is now seen in more than 50 countries. The format has been awarded, among others, Emmys, BAFTAs and a Rose d'Or. The Traitors emerged from his fascination with the fact that we increasingly trust one another less. Pos created a world in which to make this visible: what do trust and betrayal look like? His aim was to show this behaviour to a wide audience.
Alongside the productions through which he gained recognition, Pos has been working throughout his life on his own artistic investigation into time. This fascination began in his youth, with the elusive idea that past, present and future may not be as easily separated as we experience them to be. In his work, he explores time not as an abstract concept, but as a human experience. He calls it his personal theory of relativity.
His art is therefore not a break with the other part of his oeuvre, but another manifestation of the same lifelong question: how can the zeitgeist be captured and told?