How to cope with reality

"Art is rebellion or it is nothing" Mike Kelley

This idea of demolishing and creation after the destruction is something that seems to be important to the lecturing artist of today's lunch talk, Thomas Kilpper. He started working first in the media of printmaking but today he invited all of us who are interested in that side of his work to visit the house that will at one point be demolished where he is working alongside with his students, now entering the third and last week of the first set of classes. He chose to concentrate more today in showing us and talking later with the audience about his projects that are in a sense more political and more community conscious.

He doesn't consider himself a political artist even though he believes that every piece of art is in a sense political in its nature and he tries to reflect at things politically. The projects he spoke about  today reflected the questions that he seems to be extremely interested in and that is the role of the art today and if it is possible to create a piece of art work in a war occupied environment and to make a difference or to start a change in that community. On one of the project he worked alongside with the Palestine community in creating a sculpture of a horse out of the scrap metal. The metal spoke many different stories of tragedy in the war stricken community and one of many is a story of a doctor that died in the ambulance car. The piece of the ambulance car is now part of the horse that was carried through the streets. The horse in the Palestine community is the symbol of freedom.

His interest in acting globally in a sense but as a means using something that could easily be considered as a universal symbol found his way in a project he started working on in relation to the question of immigration at the island of Lampedusa. Up till now the lighthouse he wanted to create for this island, this big rock, as a symbol of welcoming and undermining the European policy to block the passage to Europe is not done on that island. A model of how the artist would wish the light house to look like traveled around different cities in Europe. In that way the idea even if it is not completely finished is still working in this manner as a symbol and a metaphor to the issue he wishes to put a focus on.

The ongoing conflicts of inequality in the world are something that pushed the artist to move away from his medium and to start working on big pieces for the public space. That for him was a must. No questions asked. It would be easy for him to accept to work on a project in Palestine and to continue painting or printing in his studio but in that way his hands "would not be burned". Thomas Kilpper is aware that he is living in the space of reality and that our world often is not a normal one.

"We have to do what we ought to do...This is reality and we have to cope with the reality. I am not living in the place beside reality and I am part of it. I think art is part of all societies and I think art always deals with the contemporary otherwise it is not art".

So using the words of Thomas Kilpper that he used to start the question part of the lecture talk acting as a reality check for most students "It could be a very good idea to go back to work as we are having a show on Friday".