issue No. 10

Dear Readers,

What is real and what is artificial? And when does one begin to transform into the other? There are no clear boundaries anymore. Nature becomes artificial, the artificial becomes natural. Even in art, the lines are blurring: When is it authentic, when artificial – and what does truth actually mean in a world in which we can shape and alter reality at any time?

The term “artificial” awakens a slight sense of unease within us. Perhaps because it reminds us that we intervene creatively and in doing so cross boundaries whose course has become uncertain. Yet humanity has always been a creator of artificial worlds. Language itself is artificial, created to depict reality – yet at the same time language also creates realities of its own.

It is precisely in art that this becomes clear: the “artificial” allows us to delve deeper into the essence of things. For art lives from conscious staging, from deliberate estrangement and even from deception – ultimately in order to arrive at a new, perhaps even higher truth. Here, artificiality does not become the opposite of authenticity, but rather its extension.

Today we live in a reality in which the natural and the artificial constantly overlap. One might say: we have long been living in an age of conscious artificiality – and yet we are more than ever searching for authenticity, truthfulness and clarity. It is a game, a constant dance between reality and simulation, between nature and artistic form.

Perhaps this is precisely where the new honesty of our time lies: consciously embracing the artificial without abandoning the longing for what is real. Not as opposites, but as two sides of one and the same reality.

In this spirit, I warmly invite you to embark on a journey with us – a journey through spaces of thought that reveal the real within the artificial and the truth within the staged. For those who open themselves to it may ultimately discover, precisely within the “Artificial”, a hidden form of truth.

Warm regards,

Yours,
Korbinian Kohler