The Munich-based master gave this presentation as part of the “AJF Speaker Series: Jewelry that Makes You Think,” which featured 16 talks over five days. The series took place in the booth AJF shared with Arnoldsche Art Publishers at the Messe. The full text of Künzli’s talk appears below the video—you’ll find it in both English and German.
TEXT IN ENGLISH
Cracks
“When I hear the word culture
I release the safety on my Browning”.1 (an old American synonym for revolver, gun etc.)
Wearing jewelry is a conscious decision of the kind that only human beings make. Paradise holds the promise of immortality, eternity. The price is high. And many things will be excluded from paradise. Jewelry is one of them.
Without finitude there would be no questioning, no utopias, no searching, and no finding. There would be no songs, no music, no dancing, either without or with masks. There would be no stories to be told, no fairytales, legends or myths to listen to, no poems to be recited. Scratched on rocks, drawn on paper, painted on canvas – there would be no symbols, images, pictures, no figures would ever be carved, coaxed from stone, cast in bronze. Never would a vessel be baked from clay, a dress woven from threads, or a tent built from skins. No philosophy, no sciences, no religions. Neither temples nor pyramids, nor cathedrals; architecture would never be seen. Even the simplest and most ingenious of inventions such as the wheel, the shoehorn or Italian “aglio e olio” pasta for that matter. The same applies to photography, movies and the conversion of all data into 1s and 0s. Art and everything else we consider to be culture would never have come into being. There would be neither cognition nor belief nor doubt, neither love nor pain, neither suffering nor joy. Neither death nor jewelry would exist.
As far as the eye could see, not a single little lucky charm in a world devoid of luck.
There would be no time.
“Oh poor old time,
oh poor old time,
nobody has time for love anymore.”2
Without finitude there could be no evolution and without evolution no life and we humans would certainly not be able to exist at all. In her book “Timefulness. How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World” Marcia Bjornerud puts it in a nutshell: As attractive as the notion of timelessness may be, there is a far deeper and more enigmatic beauty about an active consciousness of time.
It isn’t easy and yet I think this, I say this, and I write it down, namely the fact that I am infinitely grateful to be a finite being.
Without art, the outer darkness would not give way, that inner light would not be switched on.
I would not want to, be able to live without ALL those things, I just wouldn’t be alive.
A few minutes left,
Let me round things up and conclude with two quotations. The first from Leonard Cohen, the second and last from Ocean Vuong:
“There is a crack
A crack in everything
That’s how
The light gets in.”3
As long as I can sometimes succeed in surprising myself I will carry on looking for those little hairline “cracks”. And then I will let the light in and bathe in it for a short while.
“On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.”4
Footnotes:
1 The quotation appended to the title stems from the play “Schageter”, written by Hanns Johst (1890–1978) and performed in 1933. Johst was a German Nazi, cultural policymaker, poet and dramatist; he directly took his cue from Nazi philosophy as a member of the Third Reich’s officially approved writers’ organizations.
The quote has been variously misattributed to:
Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering.
I am using this phrase here in the context of the ever-growing number of “hate speeches” and instances of autocratic and neo-fascist propaganda on the Internet, on TV, and in real life situations and the repeatedly proven fact that “words are followed by deeds”.
2 Peter Handke. Schnee von gestern. Schnee von morgen. Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin. 2024. p.19
3 Leonard Norman Cohen, 1934 – 2016
Canadian singer, poet, writer and painter
Quotation from the song “Anthem”, 1992
4 Ocean Vuong, 1988 in Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnamese/American poet, essayist, novelist and professor. “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous». Debut novel, 2019, Penguin Press
TEXT AUF DEUTSCH
Cracks
«Wenn ich das Wort Kultur höre
entsichere ich meinen Revolver»1
Schmuck zu tragen ist eine bewusste Entscheidung, die so nur Menschen treffen. Das Paradies verspricht Unsterblichkeit, Ewigkeit. Der Preis ist hoch. Im Paradies gibt es viele Dinge nicht. Dazu gehört auch Schmuck.
Ohne Endlichkeit gäbe es keine Fragen, keine Utopien, kein Suchen, kein Finden. Es gäbe keine Lieder, keine Musik, kein Tanz, mit Masken oder auch ohne. Es gäbe keine Geschichten zu erzählen, keine Märchen, Sagen und Mythen zu hören, keine Gedichte zu rezitieren. In Fels geritzt, auf Papier gezeichnet, auf Leinwand gemalt: Symbole, Zeichen, Bilder, gäbe es nicht; keine Figuren je geschnitzt, dem Stein entlockt, aus Bronze gegossen. Nie ein Gefäß aus Ton gebrannt, aus Fasern ein Kleid gewoben, aus Haut ein Zelt gebaut. Keine Philosophie, keine Wissenschaften, keine Religionen. Weder Tempel, noch Pyramiden, noch Kathedralen; Architektur, nie gesehen. Auch so simple wie geniale Erfindungen wie das Rad, der Schuhlöffel oder die Pasta aglio e olio. Desgleichen die Fotografie, Film und die Umwandlung sämtlicher Daten in 1 und 0. Kunst und was man sonst alles unter Kultur subsummiert, sie wäre nie entstanden. Es gäbe weder Erkenntnis, noch Glauben, keine Zweifel, keine Liebe, keinen Schmerz, weder Leid noch Freud. Den Tod und auch den Schmuck, es gäbe sie nicht.
Weit und breit, kein einziger kleiner Glücksbringer in einer glückslosen Welt.
Es gäbe keine Zeit.
«Ach, du liebe Zeit,
ach du liebe Zeit,
keiner hat mehr für die Liebe Zeit.»2
Ohne Endlichkeit gäbe es keine Evolution und ohne Evolution kein Leben und uns Menschen schon gar nicht. In ihrem Buch «Timefulness. How thinking like a Geologist Can Help Save the World» bringt Marcia Bjornerud das auf den Punkt: So verlockend die Vorstellung der Zeitlosigkeit auch sein mag, es liegt eine weit tiefere und rätselhaftere Schönheit im Gewahrsein der Zeit.
Es fällt nicht leicht, und doch, ich denke es, ich sage es, ich schreibe es:
Ich bin unendlich dankbar, endlich zu sein.
Ohne Kunst würde die äußere Dunkelheit nicht weichen,
das innere Licht sich nicht entzünden.
Ich würde ohne das ALLES nicht leben wollen, nicht leben können, nicht leben.
Es bleiben mir noch wenige Minuten
Ich schließe und ende mit zwei Zitaten. Das erste von Leonard Cohen, das zweite und letzte von Ocean Vuong:
«There is a crack
A crack in everything
That’s how
The light gets in.»3
Solange es mir gelegentlich gelingt, mich selbst zu überraschen,
suche ich weiter nach diesen kleinen, feinen «cracks».
Und dann lass ich das Licht herein und nehme darin ein kurzes Vollbad.
«On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.»4
Footnotes:
1 The Subtitle is a quote from the play «Schageter», written by Hanns Johst (1890-1978) and performed in 1933. He was a German national socialist, cultural politician, poet and dramatist, directly aligned with the Nazi philosophy as a member of the officially approved writers’ organisations of the Third Reich.
It has been variously misattributed to:
Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering.
Here I am using this phrase in the context of the daily increasing number of «Hate speeches» and autocratic and Neo Fascist Propaganda in the Internet, TV and also in real life situations and the repeatedly proven fact that «words are followed by seeds».
2 Peter Handke. Schnee von gestern. Schnee von morgen. Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin. 2024. S.19
3 Leonard Norman Cohen, 1934 – 2016
Canadian Singer, Poet, Writer and Painter
Quote from the song «Anthem», 1992
4 Ocean Vuong, 1988 in Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnamese-US-american poet, essayist, novelist and professor. «On Earth we’re Briefly Gorgeous – Auf Erden sind wir kurz grandios». Debut Novel, 2019, Penguin Press
