In Conversation with Kamil Kuskowski

Krzysztof Cichoń: What will be in your Uczta malarstwa?

Kamil Kuskowski: It will have at least two meanings. The title of the exhibition determined that still lifes would form part of it. The visual feast matters most, but because I shall make the pictures from real objects, a literal feast will also be possible. In the word “uczta” we hear “ucz-ta malarstwa”. This leads towards the room with art books, which teach many people about painting.

K.C.: Still lifes were often a pretext for a certain erudite game and generally had several layers of meaning. The paintings of Georg Flegel are an excellent example: by painting a horned stag beetle marching towards a fish lying on a plate and cut with a huge knife, he simultaneously showed the Evil One's designs on the beneficent effects of the Saviour's Passion. Don't you think there is no possibility of achieving such ambiguity today? However you arrange your fruit, — it will remain merely fruit. Since at least Warhol's reproductions of Campbell's tomato soup cans, still life has lacked any symbolic context. However much you might want to, you cannot evoke any associations, because there is no shared code and the entire game differs little from dressing shop windows.

K.K.: I think context matters. This erudite game takes place chiefly at the level of the associations and meanings of the exhibition title itself. My still life returns to the table's original meaning. It is a game based on reversal, on inversion: I do not want to paint the symbolic meanings of fruit. I do not want to use a brush to transfer real fruit into a picture hanging on the wall at all. On the contrary: I want to turn the picture into a table, extract its individual elements and restore them to real existence. I should like viewers leaving the exhibition to feel that they had stepped among the old still lifes hanging on a museum wall. Naturally, my pictures will be somewhat larger than Dutch still lifes.

K.C.: So it is a return to the forest, a return to nature.

K.K.: No. In my view, the still life and the table are nevertheless cultural phenomena. If I wanted to return all the way to nature, I would have to invoke the most basic sensation of hunger.

K.C.: How do you imagine this method being continued, by your students, for example? Instead of painting, are they to begin arranging objects extracted from pictures? Will you then give them a Master of Fine Arts degree?

K.K.: I wouldn't go that far…

K.C.: So this is an individual action…

K.K.: It is a certain action within the realm of still life. There are different foundations of image-making. We perceive the world visually, and I want to move beyond that. Perhaps it is somewhat tautological—I show the still life before it is painted—but I want to break through a certain barrier of the image. This is an investigation into the image's limits. In principle, viewers must decide for themselves whether they wish to break through that barrier or respect it. Through the still lifes, I give them the opportunity to do so. A particular kind of interactivity between the viewer and these picture-tables will matter. My creative path is based on a continual polemic with the tradition of painting. Painting has a separate place in the history of art. Although art is essentially divided into two highly subjective categories: good art and bad art. And that is the realm of endless discussion. Either we agree on our assessment of particular artists or exhibitions, or we don't…

K.C.: Don't you think that, as an artist, you have a certain responsibility, and that you are more accountable than a tram driver or chemical engineer for ensuring that individual aesthetic choices do not appear impossible to reconcile? We stop at either agreeing or disagreeing. Perhaps artists have a duty to propose new things and construct exhibitions in ways that increase the chance of meeting and reaching an understanding about our judgements and choices. Shouldn't an artist take account of the communal role of what he or she does?

K.K.: That is everyone's responsibility, not only the artist's. The idea that everybody will agree with everybody else seems completely utopian. I don't write somebody off because he listens to disco polo. I may not talk to him, but…

K.C.: Imagine a city of people who do not speak to one another unless they have a minor collision and have to. They speak only in situations of conflict, and then any dialogue becomes associated with a conflict situation…

K.K.: That is how the world is built. We are speaking now about utopian situations; you will agree with me…

K.C.: That is exactly what I am asking you: shouldn't an artist adopt a maximalist, utopian position? Who the hell is supposed to do that if not artists?

K.K.: Perhaps artists should fight for a better world.

K.C.: Perhaps a little more than soldiers…

K.K.: Better also means more beautiful. In a certain way, this exhibition fulfils such a role. It is highly “aesthetic” and conforms to the requirements of traditional aesthetics: after all, my still lifes literally contain nothing but beauty. No scandal, no plays for the media. The entire exhibition is a polemic with the idea of beauty.

***

K.C.: Among the many kinds of still life, those composed from meat bore a particularly heavy symbolic burden. They referred to the ambiguity of the word carnis—meat and flesh at once. Jolanta Brach-Czajna captured this perfectly, juxtaposing in a single essay the ritual of entombment, the preparation of a corpse and a recipe for stuffed lamb. Pieter Aertsen's famous meat paintings are sometimes interpreted as allegories of the Gospel phrase about the willing spirit and weak flesh. Will you compose anything from meat?

K.K.: I don't know yet. As with painting, certain questions are resolved at the final moment. I think there will probably be some cured meat. As I said, I would prefer to avoid references of the kind that allow viewers to recognise immediately: this is sixteenth-century, this is seventeenth-century, this is after Aertsen, for example.

K.C.: I ask about meat because twentieth-century art, especially art enamoured of the effect of disgust—abject art—often showed various shocking literalities of meat. Will your feast be bloody, or gently fruity?

K.K.: What you are talking about is particularly evident in film. Today, the still life has its place above all in the world of film. Greenaway, and of course Marco Ferreri's La Grande Bouffe.

K.C.: Two attitudes predominated towards old still lifes: either contemplation, as with the paintings of Cotán, Flegel or, later, Morandi, or a sensuality tinged with lasciviousness—most often sexual luxuria. Is your Uczta malarstwa closer to contemplation?

K.K.: Perhaps; I shall have to think about it. I hadn't considered the sexual theme, although perhaps I shall arrange a still life that evokes eroticism or the erotic quality of food. There really is an element of sexual sensuality in eating. The films we mentioned show it perfectly. I have always cared about aesthetics. About details. Alongside the message, the way it is communicated also matters. Most of my exhibitions can be described as “aesthetic”. Here I disagree with some colleagues who believe that if somebody has a message to communicate, they cannot do so in an aestheticising way. Why not? Let us show that even when we object to something, we do not reject what has positive value.

***

K.C.: Let us dwell on the senses. You emphasise that you are interested in broadening the spectrum of sensations offered by painting, in moving beyond sight alone. I wanted to ask you about sensuality and politics. George Ritzer, the author of the thesis on the McDonaldisation of culture, said something like this: “Politicians increasingly make their living from selling experiences; they treat voters like customers (…).” In the case of politicians, the criticism is clear: they should not offer experiences but care for the common good, with enough talent and wisdom to pose even difficult questions. Don't you think that, in making aestheticising exhibitions, you too are a seller of experiences? Apparently everything is becoming commercialised…

K.K.: In one sense I provide experiences, undoubtedly, but I also have my manifesto to communicate.

K.C.: Go ahead…

K.K.: I don't mean a written programme or doctrine. This exhibition rather brings a certain stage of my path to a close. I think that afterwards I shall move into completely different areas. Old painting continues to occupy me; it still possesses enormous charm and appeal, but I am not interested in building the new upon the ruins of the old. What interests me is playing a game with the viewer, changing the way they understand art, and using certain traditions that function in the reception of art to guide the human imagination somewhat differently. To motivate people to engage with art differently, while also showing the sources of such ways of receiving art. Why do we go to museums to see originals? Why do we surround ourselves with art books, often without ever opening them?

K.C.: In private, do you ever have moments when you look up, see something and realise that it is not right…

K.K.: I do. Sometimes I sit at home reading and suddenly see that something is wrong. I get up and change it, move books around, try other arrangements. I have a very strong need to aestheticise my own life.

K.C.: To me, one of the last artists able to register and show that kind of gaze in painting was Czapski—but he was born in the nineteenth century! I think we live in a culture in which people buy more and more art books, then look at them while sitting on a sofa and increasingly lose the ability to look at and notice what is not in the book but a metre away from the sofa. As a result, we have more and more beautiful art books in homes on ugly streets.

K.K.: I agree. Art or painting is encountered almost exclusively through books. People build an aesthetic space for themselves somewhat unconsciously…

K.C.: This aesthetic space, as you call it, is always in the book, elsewhere, far away.

K.K.: What matters most is that some need nevertheless exists to order one's life according to aesthetic values, to build private enclaves of some kind. If it happens slowly, so be it.

***

K.C.: So you don't feel like a seller of experiences?

K.K.: No. It isn't only about selling a particular aesthetic formula. I also want to show a displacement of concepts. The point is to ask whether the still life I assemble from foodstuffs is a picture. Will it be received as a picture or as an artistic joke? And what, in this instance, is the first creative process? With Pieter Claesz, for example? First he had to arrange the still life itself, and then he merely reproduced it. The fact that he used brushes matters, but does not determine the creative process. The primary act—arranging the situation as he wanted it—is decisive. Vermeer was above all an outstanding set designer. He arranged a scene and appropriated the image through various technical means, including the camera obscura.

K.C.: Let us return, then, to the question of what determines whether or not this is a work of art. Is that the question you want to pose?

K.K.: The fact that it is located in a gallery is a trap that makes the issue difficult to resolve. This is the tradition of an institution that sanctions the work, and therefore the artist. The art institution confirms that Mr X is an artist and that this is unquestionably a work of art.

K.C.: It follows that studying at an art academy is basically unnecessary. Is the ability to persuade gallery owners enough?

K.K.: You are aware that there are artists who never studied anywhere…

K.C.: Exactly, so there is no point in studying…

K.K.: No, precisely not. That theory is proclaimed by people who did not succeed. It is a subjective matter. Perhaps art schools are needed only by people who believe they need them. The others, who believe they will manage perfectly well without one, do not need to study. I agree with that, but not with what you said earlier. I value my time at art school because of the contact with people, the conversations with them and the conclusions I draw from those encounters for my own work.

K.C.: I agree with you in part, but art schools happen to be places with relatively little social life. Five years spent on the upper concourse of the Tenth Anniversary Stadium would have developed you much more than studying.

K.K.: Undoubtedly, but the meeting place one chooses also matters. We are sitting in a gallery today because it is peaceful here and we can talk freely. When people choose to study, I think they hope to meet others with similar interests.

***

K.C.: Let us talk about books.

K.K.: A book about pictures that becomes a picture is, in my view, a highly perverse situation. This is my game with the image and the viewer. I say: consider whether these pictures replace books for you. Do you buy books only to put them on a shelf? Or perhaps you should get up and go to a museum once in your life? I know many people who have a great many art books at home but buy them entirely unconsciously. Some publishers now add special shelving units with a prominent frame to their books. It is a paradox! I want to show the absurdity of the situation, though without entirely negating it. Without those books, many people would have no contact with art at all. Imagine a world without art books, without reproductions…

K.C.: Well, I once attended art history lectures at which the lecturer managed perfectly well without reproductions, or showed photographs only a few centimetres across. The architecture of Rome, about which Professor Antoni Maśliński spoke with great verve, then consisted for me entirely of exotic names. It worked on the imagination…

K.K.: That is interesting, but access to art would then become even more marginal.

K.C.: One can always meet a living artist, as I am meeting you. One can long for such an encounter and seek an opportunity…

K.K.: That was once the case, but today an art book is generally one's first encounter with art—most often a chance encounter. The negative side of art books is that they distort the true image of art, but not everybody can travel to the Louvre. Many people regard books about art and art itself as separate matters. I don't; I believe that books and art have much in common. Art books would not exist without art, but art's broad popular circulation would not exist without art books either.

K.C.: Does the reproduction awaken a longing to encounter the original?

K.K.: Yes. In this exhibition I say: now I am making this art book into a work of art. After all, these are books containing works by great masters; it is difficult to say that they are worthless or bad. One doesn't criticise the great masters, so can one criticise the same thing once it becomes a framed work of art? Many people will certainly moan: what an idea! He has put art books in frames! But perhaps somebody will wonder why Kuskowski exhibited these books, placed the still lifes beside them and entitled the whole thing Uczta malarstwa. After all, the tradition of consumption relates to all the senses, including sight. We do not consume only while eating. We nourish our minds and our souls.

***

K.C.: Viewers at your exhibition are to decide in which of the two rooms, in their opinion, the real works of art are located: the one with the laden tables or the one with framed art books. I suppose this will amount to searching for the aura that supposedly surrounds the original, about which Walter Benjamin wrote. This vague concept means an irreproducible uniqueness. As I understand it, in your view grapes or a cheeseboard can possess such an aura. Is the selection and arrangement of fruit alone enough?

K.K.: I think so. My observations suggest that there are some still lifes which students choose more readily than others, which they want to paint and which produce interesting works. There are also still lifes that cannot be painted well—perhaps they lack what you call an aura.

K.C.: So some lecturers are no good at arranging still lifes, while others are excellent “arrangers”?

K.K.: Of course, just as some people paint still lifes brilliantly and others do not.

K.C.: The exhibition lasts quite a long time—over a month—and this raises the question of a certain literal vanitas because, unfortunately, some products, such as cheese, mature rather quickly. How do you intend to resolve this technically? After three weeks, the olfactory qualities may obscure the optical ones.

K.K.: I think the products will be replaced. I am not interested in showing the process through which a still life rots. I do want, however, to break the taboo of the picture hanging on a museum wall, which one must not approach too closely because it might be damaged. By offering the possibility of optical and consumptive contact with these pictures, I break that taboo. My painting can be altered, it can be eaten, but it should be renewed from time to time.

K.C.: Do you realise that for a month you may have to come in every day and rearrange six still lifes? People consume so much today—what will you do?

K.K.: They will have to be arranged every day.

K.C.: Who will arrange them?

K.K.: I will.

K.C.: That could ruin your personal life…

K.K.: They will not be complicated still lifes. I shall come in to see what they look like. I am interested in how people will behave; so far, the proposition that they prefer the boundary around art to be more open to them has proved correct…

K.C.: Are you allowing for the possibility that forty minutes after the opening, only empty framed tables will remain?

K.K.: I am, but I would not want anyone to encourage it. These still lifes may disappear, provided it happens naturally.

K.C.: Then you require something like a pre-opening silence. And supposedly nothing natural remains in our lives. You are appealing for people to refrain from certain actions.

K.K.: I have to discuss it with you and the people producing the exhibition, but I do not intend to put up a sign saying “Please eat” or “Do not touch”. No! The point is to see whether, in this situation, such an aestheticising still life will be treated like a picture or not. After all, it has not been painted; it is real. One has to wonder: is it allowed or not? It is a story similar to what took place in Paradise among Eve, the apple and Adam. I can eat it, but it is nevertheless a work of art… what happens next? Will somebody reprimand me? Will security approach me? People have a need to break through every barrier, but they also have a conscience.

K.C.: For the first time, security will be cast as the Archangel Gabriel. If they demand angelic rates, it could be the end of this gallery.

***

K.C.: In your view, does the concept of the avant-garde still have any meaning today?

K.K.: That is a difficult question. If we refer to the historical avant-garde, there is a sense of something missing because no such Great Avant-Garde exists today. We all feel it. It is true that people say somebody “is avant-garde”, but the avant-garde—understood as something that attracts attention, something that causes continual ferment—is absent.

K.C.: Don't you think that the first avant-garde remains so fascinating because those people paid a very high price for their artistic choices?

K.K.: Undoubtedly…

K.C.: Today, meanwhile, artists have fewer opportunities to pay a high price for what they do. They are usually positioned quite comfortably within society, if only in the role of teachers.

K.K.: I think that is precisely the case. Compared with that historical avant-garde, the conditions prevailing today mean we can conclude that no avant-garde now exists.

K.C.: I think it is a question of personal risk.

K.K.: I agree. They lived for art and nothing else interested them. The Great Avant-Garde did not think materialistically, at most about having to obtain alcohol, food—the simplest things. It was authentic. The world has changed so greatly that if artists lived like that today, they would probably end up in closed institutions as dangerous people who caused disturbances, failed to respect their health and so on…

K.C.: The question is whether a teacher can simultaneously be a madman, and how this affects the quality of teaching. Do you have social insurance? Will you receive a pension?

K.K.: Yes.

K.C.: So will I. I think the only person among those I interviewed in connection with exhibitions at Atlas Sztuki who will not have a pension is Gerard Blum-Kwiatkowski.

K.K.: It is a great attitude, but there are few people like that.

K.C.: It contains an element of stunt work. Years ago, an anthology devoted to Wojaczek and Stachura, among others, appeared under the excellent title The Stuntmen of Literature. It seems to me that what attracted attention—what always attracts it—was the element of personal risk. Performers noticed that, as did the producers of television entertainment programmes.

K.K.: It is difficult to disagree with you.

K.C.: Someone who is an artist and simultaneously connected with the Academy has no opportunity for that kind of stunt work. On one hand, they argue that art is extremely important and tolerates no compromise; on the other, they function under the same rules of social security as representatives of professions that do not seek the continual attention of their surroundings. Have you never been tempted to leave the Academy and begin doing everything on your own terms?

K.K.: In my case, the two do not conflict. I hope one day to run my own studio and take responsibility for what I want to communicate to young people. Contact with young people gives me enormous pleasure, but does not interfere with what I do as an artist. Both affect what happens to me.

K.C.: In the past, an artist was also distinguished by possessing a certain craft, a technical ability unavailable to everyone. But if you consciously abandon that element while also giving up the stunt work in your life, how does your status differ from that of any thinking person?

K.K.: There is one answer to that question. Everybody chooses their own place in life to realise what lies within them. Some choose to be artists, others salespeople and still others generals. It is also a question of some people using a traditional technique and others a contemporary one. It is a matter of being conscious in one's use of a given tool. Whether it is a brush, pen or video camera is secondary. What matters is awareness of why I pick up that tool.

***

K.C.: I am trying to understand why you believe painting can be replaced by a camera.

K.K.: A camera is as good a medium as paint if one knows what one wants to do with that medium. I do not want to replace one thing with another; I simply believe that a camera used consciously is as much a painterly medium as paint or pastels. Some people define painting from the technical side, dividing it into mural, easel painting and so forth. A second school, more open to novelty, maintains that painting is a way of thinking. In other words, that it is not limited to a medium, but open to everything.

K.C.: I imagine that somebody who first studies painting and then makes a living from it possesses a certain way of perceiving the world, which generally translated into recording observations and making sketches, for example. You are abandoning that; you are abandoning what is specific to painting understood as a way of thinking. The medium, tool or organon employed by thought is inseparable from it and influences its form…

K.K.: No, that is an inert way of thinking: that I have to make some sketch or note. I can make those sketches simply in my head.

K.C.: The head is usually where completely new things live before emerging into the world—things that did not previously exist in it. And that is indeed how the artist's role is most often understood today. Painting as a way of thinking, however, was probably connected with the conviction that one does not so much create something new as discover it, because it already exists in the world and merely awaits being noticed. This is the distinction between idealisms, of which there may be countless varieties, and realist thought, which by no means amounts only to mimetic literalness. The contemporary world is flooded with idealist systems created without any reference to reality, in both art and philosophy. The problem is that, immediately after their invention, such separate worlds, “straight from the head”, are forgotten and end as uninhabited worlds. That is why I was so delighted by the return of the still life as something a painter can exhibit. I spoke with Rafał Jakubowicz about the idea that the artist's technique consists solely of thought in its pure form, which God forbid should be restricted by any technical limitations…

K.K.: Somebody who, like us, graduated from an art academy nevertheless has some awareness of traditional technique!

K.C.: What use is that awareness if it has no influence on what you do?

K.K.: It influences it in some way. If I have painted a number of pictures with a brush during my life, that enables me to design situations around painting differently because I understand what that medium is in the traditional sense. I do not reject traditional painting; I seek other planes upon which it can be redefined. I think that is interesting.

K.C.: Aren't you afraid that this constant search for novelty and redefinition will ultimately lead to everything being able to become anything?

K.K.: Yes and no.

K.C.: It is enjoyable, but it leads to an all-encompassing ease.

K.K.: I have repeatedly heard opinions about contemporary art along the lines of: I could take a snap too, and it would be the same. That is a fundamental error in thinking. People imagine that a digital camera or video camera does everything for them. It does not. Making something interesting that will not be so easy requires a great deal of time, an idea and thought.

K.C.: Increasingly, attention is attracted by rather unreflective phenomena such as Lomography or the fashion for making films on mobile phones.

K.K.: That is marginal. I think the companies manufacturing such devices pump money into ventures that allow their customers to believe that anyone can become an artist.

K.C.: If you are looking for a way beyond the traditional formula of painting, seeking “new planes”, aren't you behaving a little like such a company? Isn't it the same mechanism: everything can serve every purpose, so let us expand the range of possibilities.

K.K.: No, no. I think it arises from the eternal desire to move beyond certain situations that have emerged in art. To go one step further.

***

K.C.: Since this is yet another exhibition in which you investigate the boundaries of painting, you must have a clear view of what painting is.

K.K.: I think painting is defined by two things: light and colour. Everything else is shared by painting and other kinds of creative work. If we define painting in this way, a video camera or still camera can also be a painterly tool. Anything based on light and colour can be painting.

K.C.: In that way, absolutely everything can be called painting. Uklański, who gathers thousands of soldiers, dresses them in red shirts and arranges them on the Gdańsk Shipyard waterfront to form the Solidarity logo, is painting too.

K.K.: We can likewise distinguish between one person painting in three days, another in two minutes and a third in three years. If this is to affect our assessment of whether a picture is better or worse, it becomes meaningless. Is the person who painted for three years the best painter? The question of painterly alchemy is important, of course; as I have said, I value traditional painting highly. But I do not want particular conventions to restrict my artistic activity. While I was still a student, I decided that after graduating nobody would tell me what to do. I respect craftspeople who struggle with matter and technique, but it begins to trouble me when someone ranks one thing above another.

K.C.: That is inevitable…

K.K.: No, no. Viewers—the educated ones, the eggheads who genuinely know their stuff—will decide whether it makes sense. If it is weak, traditional technique will not help. Nor does it matter whether something was shot on video. There are bad video artists and good ones. After all, you know immediately when you are dealing with something good.

K.C.: Usually I am not certain. You assume that the milieu is always right…

K.K.: No, I do not assume that. Naturally, there are certain preferences, but there are also—attention, I am about to use a ridiculous expression—universal truths. Something genuinely good will win the recognition of somebody to whose personal taste it does not appeal.

***

K.C.: Has anything you made ever been completely misunderstood? Has the reception of an exhibition ever been entirely different from what you expected?

K.K.: I don't think so, although sometimes one hears what people are saying behind one's back. But I have never encountered constructive criticism delivered directly to my face.

K.C.: I ask because I wonder how important crises are to development…

K.K.: Very! I have crises…

K.C.: We all have crises, but paradoxically we cope better with internal ones and probably worse with those imposed on us by our surroundings. Don't you think there are artists, often occupying the upper levels of the hierarchy, who have not encountered a crisis during several decades of activity because of certain artificial conditions created by the academic milieu?

K.K.: Often they create those conditions for themselves. It is a fascinating subject; I have made similar observations. There are some artists about whom nothing is written any more; they continue through sheer momentum. They still do what they did at the beginning. Yet the point, surely, is to surprise oneself sometimes. For me, the only positive example of artistic consistency is Roman Opałka's work. It is his lifetime project. There are, however, many artists of the older generation who paint the same pictures they made in the 1960s. That is not negative; they simply work in long series, whereas people now work quite differently, along multiple lines.

***

K.C.: How important is the frame to your idea?

K.K.: The frame is perverse. In this project it is used differently from its use in the history of art. It is used as a frame for a table, a frame for a book. Does a picture become a real picture only once it is surrounded by a frame? That is the question. And will the table's frame prevent interaction? This is a question about the limits of painting, about whether they can be crossed and whether such a transgression means that what is inside the frame is no longer painting. The frame matters because it is a boundary assigned to things with which it has not previously been associated.

K.C.: In your still lifes, will you refer to contemporary works such as Daniel Spoerri's assemblages?

K.K.: I shall rather try to refer to still lifes of the kind that are reproduced in the art books displayed beside them.

***

K.K.: Once, when I was beginning work on this project, I thought: an orange like this, an apple…

K.C.: A cauliflower…

K.K.: A cauliflower, a cable, scissors, a lamp, anything. Do these things fulfil their value only when I paint them, or when I assemble and show them in the appropriate way? What makes something a work of art? What makes something a picture?

K.C.: You will end up a director. Indeed, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish an artist from a manager. The artist manages a team of makers and directs a particular situation, or even “manages a crisis”. You will stage performances—without actors, admittedly, but with extremely careful set design.

K.K.: One can regard constructing a still life as a performance. When discussing students' work, I often say that the background and extras in a still life are as important as the leading actor. There are certain analogies here. I often explain that this pear is…

K.C.: Do you already know who will be the leading character of the exhibition at Atlas Sztuki?

K.K.: I don't know yet.

K.C.: As I understand it, your exhibition will be more a tragedy than a comedy?

K.K.: It is difficult to say… I think it will be on the boundary. It will be a tragicomedy… perhaps.

K.C.: I am thinking about something Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote: the distinction between whether I use a certain language beyond which there is no way out, or whether I have no language at all, reject every one and remain alone, mute before reality, with nothing left to me but assembling fragments of reality. It seems to me that abandoning language and returning to reality as the sole medium is a step backwards. How is it with you? What is your language?

K.K.: My language is the abandonment of every convention.