WE NEED A GOLEM

In a context of global “game over”, of the inevitable end of a “game” and the subsequent, necessary restart, there is a unique opportunity to re-load, re-set, re-think our future, starting, however, from a sense of uncertainty, impotence and fear that leads us to invoke a golem. This giant, which is rooted in the ancient Hebrew Kabbalistic tradition and which legend has it created from mud to protect us, is a mythical figure of defence, beyond time and the predefined. In deciding to move around this esoteric symbol, I responded to the invitation of the curatorial project “Game over” by applying a methodological practice that I have long pursued as an artistic tool, that of the multiple interview. This time I have chosen to make it hybrid as well, since in January 2021 I have asked the same three questions to a truly heterogeneous series of players: four friends, including one of the most important cultural managers in Italy, a butcher from an Alpine village who grew up in New York, one of the most successful contemporary German artists with a practice that is difficult to categorise, and the director of a science museum at the top of the list of the most visited institutions in Italy. I gave them complete freedom to respond, from a few words to more articulate reasoning, and this time I decided to ask the same three questions to myself too. The questions are somewhere between epochal, dramatic and hopeful (with acute irony), and the answers are equally lucid and visionary.

Antonio Lampis is Director of the Department of Italian culture at the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, and former General Director of Museums of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism. He answered in Italian.

Stefano Cagol: The value of knowledge is suddenly being questioned…

Antonio Lampis: Knowledge as power falls more and more often into erudition; knowledge as pleasure falls more and more often into cheap entertainment; the value of knowledge goes back to what the oracle of Delphi proposed: “Know thyself”.

How can we transform ourselves (hybridise) to protect us (from ourselves)?

Give value to freedom, the true mirror of intelligence, as Dante said. Give value to the body, as Tuiavii of Tiavea said.

Propose a simple, albeit utopian, piece of advice to humanity. As a small step in a correct evolution.

When in doubt, doubt! It is very good for us.

Sarah Rigotti runs, with her husband and children, an artisan butcher and charcuterie shop in Trentino, which has been in business since 1947. She spent half her life in New York, and answered in her mother tongue, American English.

The value of knowledge is suddenly being questioned…

Sarah Rigotti: Everything is questioned. We are bombarded with information and we do not know if all of it is based on proven scientific research. The morning news will say one thing, the evening news will say another. I have never heard a broadcaster say, “We do not know and we will inform you when we have valid information”. I have never seen empty newspapers. I will not enter a political scenario here, but I can attest to the fact that there are people in politics that change parties, that say things one way and change it the next day. What are we sure of? Who can we trust?

How can we transform ourselves (hybridise) to protect us (from ourselves)?

Stefano we are always transforming ourselves. Change is the only constant. Plato once reported the words of Heraclitus, that all things pass and nothing stays the same, and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river. Since the beginning of time, humans have liked routine, it makes us feel in control of our lives. The global pandemic of Covid-19 has turned our world upside down. Life as we once knew it is over. Life is evolving and changing before us, at such a rate of speed, that we do not even realize it. We are seeped in news, information, ideas. Do we have our own ideas?

My question to you Stefano is why do we need a Golem? We are the sleeping Golem. Why should we create one outside of us? Read the wonderful lecture “The Lord, Our Potter” given by Neville Goddard on November 7, 1969.

We give life to everything.

Each one of us is a Golem, a mass of lifeless mud, that is infused with life only when we live in our desire. The only reality is imagination. You will see this topic illustrated in the article above. We must go within, there is nothing without. We are the creators. And we must trust in our creative ability. We must surrender and have trust in things that we cannot see. Our desire, the wish fulfilled, is the spark that gives life and creates.

Propose a simple, albeit utopian, piece of advice to humanity. As a small step in a correct evolution.

Well all evolutions are proper. We each develop and evolve according to our awareness, and in good time. My tip to friends is to step inside of ourselves, invest our thoughts and ideas on lovely things, on lovely thoughts. And I would suggest that they read the Bible not as a historical record, but as a statement of man’s evolution.

This is a period of “coming out” and expressing ourselves and allowing creativity. “Like Adam – they say – all golems are created from mud by those close to divinity, but no anthropogenic golem is fully human,” because he/she carries within him/her the spark of divinity, the source of all creativity.

We are Adam, we are Golem.

Tobias Rehberger, German artist, Golden Lion for best artist in the “Making Worlds” exhibition at the 53rd Venice Biennale, has been working since the 1990s on the borderline between design and architecture on the concept of transformation, on the ideas of temporality, transience and discontinuity of the relationships existing between objects and the surrounding reality. He replied in English.

The value of knowledge is suddenly being questioned…

Tobias Rehberger: Honestly I don’t think so. I’s questioned by a couple of imbeciles who are afraid of what knowledge brings them.

And that’s not even new.

How can we transform ourselves (hybridise) to protect us (from ourselves)?

The best protection is doubt. Doubt produces problems and problems produce knowledge (hopefully).

Propose a simple, albeit utopian, piece of advice to humanity. As a small step in a correct evolution.

Solidarity.

Michele Lanzinger is the Director of the MUSE Science Museum in Trento, which he has led to the new venue designed by Renzo Piano, recording a dramatic increase in terms of space, staff and visitors, which has put it at the top of the list of the most visited museums in Italy. He is a member of the national board of directors of ICOM. He replied in Italian.

The value of knowledge is suddenly being questioned…

Michele Lanzinger: It is the definition of knowledge that should be questioned, not its value. Knowledge is not, by definition, the only scientific knowledge based on the principle of falsifiability, i.e. on the scope of controllable theories. To understand complexity, to manage uncertainty, to have glimpses of the future, knowledge remains the fundamental tool as long as it is interpreted as the set of perceptive and elaborative apparatuses made available by the hybridisation between the biological self and the cultural self. In other words, a knowledge that brings into play the interdependence between the immediate somatic dimension, the result of biological processes of evolutionary adaptation, and the dimension mediated by culture, to be understood as an adaptation and evolutionary process of an extra-somatic type. The latter, which is specific and characteristic of mankind, proceeds not so much in disciplinary terms as through a continuous interpolation between the individual and collective dimensions of social relations.

How can we transform ourselves (hybridise) to protect us (from ourselves)?

A specific feature of the society that emerged from the so-called industrial revolution is the negation of the concept of the limit with the concept of development that plays for Western society a sort of founding myth, the founding myth of the capitalist market society. This myth, which acts as a stimulus towards a model of infinite growth, is not endowed with and does not provide the antigens to protect us from the irreversibility of crossing critical planetary thresholds beyond which the planet alone on which we live will not be able to protect humanity. The issue of climate justice is today the best paradigm we can adopt for a lacerating reworking of our developmentalist myth to orient our society towards new models capable of a desirable future.

Propose a simple, albeit utopian, piece of advice to humanity. As a small step in a correct evolution.

To grasp the functionality of suspension as a criterion for investigation and re-elaboration. Suspension, as an antidote to addictions, is a method and a tool for opening up new views, new insights, new desires. We, therefore, impose a theory and practice of suspension to allow us to elaborate and produce new models for a new global thought aimed at the elaboration of a new founding myth able to overcome and evolve the one based on unlimited growth. Let the Covid-19 crisis be understood as a suspension, with others that we will opportunely identify as a mental habit and a way of strategically elaborating desirable futures, to elaborate unprecedented forms of society aware of the evidence of planetary limits and the demands of climate justice.

Stefano Cagol is the author of the interview and a biennalised Italian artist whose often multi-form and multi-site works reflect on human interference with nature, including topics such as borders, viruses, and ecological issues. He responded in Italian.

The value of knowledge is suddenly being questioned…

There is an arrogant unconsciousness, which is becoming evident (mainly through the Net). A tremendously spoilt, selfish progeny with no historical memory. A phenomenology, inconceivable to me, that must be opposed.

How can we transfor.m ourselves (hybridise) to protect us (from ourselves)?

By making enlightened use of the digital, these increasingly powerful and irresistible means, changing course radically for a vision of our future that cannot be like our present. Thinking across the board, and about our past, to overcome the anthropocentric errors that we repeat without interruption.

Propose a simple, albeit utopian, piece of advice to humanity. As a small step in a correct evolution.

Reversing the logic of growth as welfare, but attempting responsible and urgent degrowth.

images: (cover 1-6) cover Stefano Cagol. WE NEED A GOLEM. Courtesy Stefano Cagol (2) Antonio Lampis. WE NEED A GOLEM. Stefano Cagol (3) Sarah Rigotti. WE NEED A GOLEM. Stefano Cagol (4) Tobias Rehberger. WE NEED A GOLEM. Stefano Cagol (5) Michele_Lanzinger. WE NEED A GOLEM. Stefano Cagol (6) Stefano Cagol. WE NEED A GOLEM