005  Digital World and Art

21.10.2015 Basel/Switzerland

Dear art lovers all over the world,

I could not sleep last night and also I am living, as contemporary painter, in our digital world, watch TV and I am confronted daily with mass of news, information. I remember  the eighties, I lived and worked for a while in Egypt.

A friend of mine had a mobile phone. What a sensation …. Nobody could escape from it.  This was an expensive and huge and heavy machine. We were together driving by car from Cairo to Alexandria over the dessert road. He asked

me “Juel, do you want to call Switzerland ?” and with a high respect to this machine I have taken the phone in the middle of the dessert and called my sister in Ascona/Switzerland. What a great event this was at those time. I thought

I was part of the privileged people.  What a nonsense in view of today.......

Our digital world would also infiltrate  my ivory tower.  To escape is very difficult. In the past I had two  websites. I did not care of that at all, for me this was not important. I not wanted Twitter, Facebook, nothing. All this communication ways disturbed my creative phases. But in spite of that I realized that I stand as Swiss artist there and I am a contemporary witness. I have to be present, even on the smallest or slightest version.

Meanwhile I have a team and they help me to do that-  for what I have no time  - to be present in the digital world.

Frankfurter Buchmesse   #fbm15

Last night I was so full of emotions, new inspirations that I found no sleep. Also I was watching TV –  I love German TV. German discussions, reports are so excellent. ARD German channel had last night a report about the Frankfurter Buchmesse. And when I heard about Precht, a new book from him, I definitively waked up. 

Richard David Precht

For me Richard David Precht is the living witness how philosophy can be transmitted – easy and absorbed like a thriller. Wow. … In the news last night I heard him talking about his newestbook “Erkenne die Welt – Geschichte der Philosophie, Band I”. I will read this book. Definitively. It is also my opinion that our digital world change completely our society.(  I follow Precht since a while and his thinking fascinate me. ) The digital world is much more as a oportunity for the small kids  to keep them calm..

To be present in the digital world need a lot of time – see my blog endless time. At a certain period of my life I had my sceptic. But when I realized that ARD and ZDF German TV Channels are on Facebook, Twitter and use the social media, so I was finally convinced to put my mental leg in this contemporary net.

How would Dali, Magritte, Picasso, Anker, Hodler, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo be influenced – if they would live in our digital world such as we have today.  What they would or could find and how they would establish their position ? How would this digital world influence their thinking, feeling and finally their painting?

With my web team I am able to move slowly but surely in the digital world – alone – in his digital world -  I don’t think I would have the real time for that. This needs a lot of hours. And this would be stolen from my art, my creation process. 

Basel/Switzerland 21.10.2015

#digital world

#richarddavidprecht

#fmb15

#ARD

#ZDF

#Swisscontemporaryartist

#juelswitzerland