Question:

Please help me understand this paragraph spoken by the German artist Alpis DeRoe?

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English is not my native tongue.

"If you believe in it you will live in it, shape and form your-self accordingly. Creative death and comfort share an intimate relationship, which only death can separate. Death to ones art work, to ones master-piece. The act of destroying is an act of creation. To base ones foundations on Nihil is to be in it all, all for one and one for all. So if you be live in it you box your-self into comfort. Another brick in the wall. Now, I am not offended by you or life and so I am have nothing within to restore and maintain. I am not and so I am strong. I am not and so I am open. I am not and so I am nothing. Then you confronted your fears unto me, directing your anger towards a silent depth, beyond he who stood before you. I am not and so there is no one to keep maintenance and so the most intense experiences are lived without fear, for there is no foundation in which emotions and ideas have a long life expectancie. You see that is why I am still alive, I do not belieave in this. This system, this society, our norms and culture. I am the Art and Artist and my uniquness is my creation. All of this and impermance, essence of life, our connection to each other understood as a foundamental aspect. And of course there is more, much much more. And so what remains is the ?, living, breathing ?, it is all here and alive. Yet we know nothing."

- Alpis DeRoe

What is he speaking about exactly?

This is a section from an interview I made in my native country Denmark. The man I interviewed is a German artist who exibited in some gallerys where I used to work.

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  1. This is what I get (from this translation:)

    An artist can't have a life.

    Comfort is a habit that kills creativity.

    Belief in nothing is all consuming.  

    You and your art become nothing.

    Live a typical life and you are a part of the problem.

    Not my problem though.

    Nothing is my strength, openness and makes me actually nothing.

    Your reaction to me falls on deaf ears.

    I don't fear anything so I have outrageous and dangerous experiences. Ordinary ideas and emotions do not last.

    (This implies he is deluded that nonexistence = immortality.)

    As a believer in nothing, I exist as art and artist and am one of a kind.

    (Every teenager in America tries out nihilism for a season,

    and this makes them all unique and artsy, right!)

    Belief in nothingness (as immortality and unique creativity,) the fact that everything changes, the spirit of existence and the collective unconscious are all (one?) an aspect of the foundation of the world.

    (This is attempt to insinuate the values of life are equal to the values of death. A clear manipulation)

    What is left? Living and breathing (implies limited/mortal existence.)

    It is, but we (non-nihilists) know nothing.


  2. The quote shows that the artist is a follower of Heidegger, who saw the world divided between the Platonists and Antiplatonists in regards to the history of metaphysics. In this viewpoint Metaphysics, meaning all the various forms of Platonism (all of philosophy from Socrates to Nietzsche), has as a doctrine that Being is presence, meaning we have it in our understanding to fully see the unchanging formal structure of the universe. Now this unchanging structure, whether seen as natural or supernatural, is according to the followers of Heidegger (and those who follow in his wake -- the late moderns) now seen as an illusion and therefore as a fake, a mere artifice. The truth, or what passes as the truth since the concept of truth is questionable itself, is, according to the late moderns, that Being is absence. The primacy of freedom is fundamental for we answer to no eternal structures (whether this be God, truth and/or nature, as a regulator of standards). We need to deconstruct the Platonist conception of Being for this leads to the celebration of diversity, toleration and novelty. We must become free, freedom now defined not as the absence of political control but as the celebration of our true selves. Philosophy has been the history of the fake, the artifice of our own mistaken understanding of Being, and now is being deconstructed to make room for our authentic selves and none is more authentic then an artist. The artist here is clearly celebrating his uniqueness for that is all we can celebrate for we know nothing for the Nihil is all.

    I think my answer here gets to the philosophical core of his statement. It maybe is not an exhaustive detailed understanding of his quote but I do think it hits the essence.

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