We desire something that is different.

We desire something that is different. Some utopia that is free and bursting with energy. At the beginning, there is a feeling of insufficiency; that things have gone wrong and good things have been lost. We focus on some phenomenon of the past and then we try to understand their circumstances and we compare them to actual circumstances. We aim for the change, as we feel unsatisfied with the possibilities of the presence.

I’m sitting in a simple but very rigid chair in the shadow of a big tree. It’s quite warm outside. The chair I’m sitting in was build by hand and it helps me to sit with a straight back though it’s quite comfortable. In front of me there is a group of ten young people between 8 and 10 years and a women of about 32 years. They are talking with each other in the group; always just one person is speaking.

Religion is a word covered with stories. Blood and gold are filling some gaps between the letters. But it softly glows and it crumbles at almost every part. Art is renovated. It has a fresh painting. Some parts are polished others have patina that is admirable and mysterious. Both words are being carried around and shown to the audience. After that they are put back in their cases. One is made of glass and stone, the other one is made from bark and leaves and flowers. Both cases say “by loneliness”.

If we talk about responsibility then we talk about us.

Its happiness that we know to be missing and there are so many things that are needed to make happiness a spreading melody. A sound that tunes everybody in who hears it. I could tell a story of a boy, or a girl, or a woman, or a comical intelligent cow, or ape, or cloud that struggles with life. The story would be about insight and awareness, about things that are different then you would have thought, about points of views, about illusions. There are many of these stories. At their end there might be some kind of enlightenment for the individual.

Being asked for a thesis, I would cry out that I don’t know, that I’m unsure and not prepared for the harshness of reality. But I would not run. Maybe I would crouch and not talk too loud and confident with the shivering knees of mine. We all carry opportunities in us, with us. Sometimes they blossom and sometimes they are carried away by the wind like dandelion seeds. I don’t like this image and I don’t like this text, but that’s its necessary nature, to be non-composed and full of cotton and soaking wet.

Cotton vs. fear is a long and fierce fight. You can hear screaming everywhere. And you can feel warmth in you if you want.

For me, as someone who hasn’t witnessed it, Black Mountain College is some kind of projection surface. There are other stories that are told about the Greece academies, enlightened circles, and artists coming together at Monte Veritas or just meeting in the light of a single candle in some studio in Netherlands in the middle of the 19th century. Stories of people coming together and doing things different. And all of the stories are different for everybody who hears them. I consider them an option for opening up fixed terms and structures. As we need to order things and give them names just to deal with the enormous complexity that surrounds us, we also need the braveness to let our well prepared orders leave us one day.

By Daniel Kiss
Visual Artist, based in Cologne
danielkiss.de