I composed this composition, it was just a small fragment that you just heard and actually
at this point the audience at that day was very confused. The tuning of the orchestra
actually gradually transformed into the music itself, but the audience is used to a very
clear separation between tuning and a performance or between the artwork like things that happen
on a stage or in the hall or things that are the performance or the intermission. It's
very clearly separated. Even a concert hall is of course a separation from the rest of
the town. Actually this separation in art is pretty recent and it's maybe just a hundred
years ago that we started to build museums, concert halls. Actually art used to be part
of life. It used to be part of ritual. It was something rather to experience, to participate.
If we were confronted with things already since ages, things that we cannot explain
in a rational way, we created rituals and the rituals give a place for daily mysteries,
birth or love or fertility or the change of seasons. But today we don't need rituals
much more. We have our brains to explain the world around us and we pay professionals
to express feelings. That's what we call art and art is not reality. Artificial means
not real. But emotions and feelings are real. Art is actually a great tool to gain access
beyond the surface. Art can say things that you cannot say in words. If you can say it,
you don't need to dance it. Art materializes ambiguity. It finds forms for the non-logic
for the paradox for the subconscious. Why separate that from life? It's part of life.
If you go to a museum, today in contemporary art, anything can be art. When an artist
decides it should be in a museum, it's art. If you happen to adore the electrical socket
or the fire extinguisher next to the door, you make a fool of yourself. Why is that?
Because I don't know, fire extinguishers are actually very beautiful, also very symbolic.
They're nice and red. But you're not supposed to have feelings outside of the frame. Of
course, you have frames around paintings but also you can call the stage a frame or the
curtain that goes up. It's a frame, also an applause can be a frame. We create safe places
to express our feelings because we're very shy. We even like to make it dark in a cinema
or in a theater. When the music is over, when the light is on, also you switch back to a
kind of rational behavior. You stop the feeling section. I have a picture. Let's pray for
the picture. Maybe it will come. I keep trying. Yeah, there he is. This is Sferir Hermansson
from a very small village in the north of Iceland. I rehearsed the name of the village,
but it's impossible. He had the courage to put normal life, to adore small things from
a regular life. He created a museum of little objects. Well, I'm sure this is not art, but
it touched me more than Cezanne or Leonardo. In some way, I think this man, he put regular
life in a museum in order to make us see it, to make us look at it. Well, of course, you
have also artists who place their art in the world. Ah, there we go. Well, this has no
function whatsoever. That's clear. So it can only be art. So that's very easy. We don't
need to get confused. We don't need to investigate it. We just place a label. We say, okay, art
and we can continue. Actually, I don't see many people there to watch it or to experience
something. Who has been here? Good. 20, 25. How long did you stay? An hour? Okay. Well,
people stayed for hours, even they returned for days. This artwork, it was hard to place
a label. The boundaries between the art and the life were not clear. So people were there
and they just observed or they experienced. I mean, okay. I have something that I consider
very shocking. It's something you might have seen it on YouTube. Yes. Okay. This is actually
Joshua Bell, one of the best violin players of today. He's playing in the subway in Washington.
And there is no one to realize that it's, well, it's the best art we have in the world.
And even he doesn't succeed to break through our expectations. And it's a really serious
matter because our expectations, it looks like we're mechanical. We follow just our pattern.
What we don't expect, we don't perceive. Even when beauty is in front of your eyes, apparently
we don't see it. Well, if you want to change the world, and let's do that, you need to
break through the expectations of people because only when you break expectations, when you
create confusion, then you create openness. And openness is the only place where contact
can take place. And just words, communicating words is not making contact. Well, today,
many great words, big inventions, good ideas. But sometimes I was worried. I mean, if our
cleverness would decide what we do, why would there be climate change, for example, or why
would we smoke? I'm so sure that it's actually emotions, feelings, things that we cannot
explain in a rational way that really motivate us, that really drive us. And that subconscious
world, we try to cover it up with a rational construction, and we think we are in charge
with our brain. But we fool ourselves. And we fool others. We are now in a physical proximity.
And it's easy to communicate a lot more than just words, of course. I have my gestures,
my insecurity, my, well, a lot of things between my words. And if you want to know something
from world far away, for example, from a different culture, what do you do if you want to have
information? You watch the news. And actually, well, you have to choose about many channels
or newspaper or internet. And these channels have to make money, so they fight for your
attention. And in order to get your attention, they must be exceptional. And news items communicate
spectacular things, or exceptional things, or bizarre or violent things. They create
a reality that is not at all the same as what is really happening in these places far away.
I was in, the first time, I was in Ramallah on the West Bank. Actually, I saw the children
coming out of school, strawberries that were ready to eat for sale, and posters of a contemporary
dance festival in the street. And I was so happy. Why was that? I mean, in every small
town in Holland, I could have seen the same. But this was Ramallah, and I expected something
totally different. And the fact that the expectations and the reality were not the same confused
me and I was open. And what I saw was real life, just the world. And it was beautiful.
Well, five years ago, I was in Cyprus for a gig. And I was not really aware of the division
of the island with the Greek and the Turkish part. I was in the south side just having
coffee on the terrace. And suddenly I heard the mosque from the other world, just a few
hundred meters away. There was the buffer zone and the Turkish part. And it felt so special
because I didn't expect it. And I can put it in words. I was confused, beauty mixed
with the kind of sadness. And I thought, how can I communicate this feeling, this experience?
And well, the people who were there, they're used to the situation. So for them, it's nothing
special. And people who were not there, they couldn't experience it. They were not there.
And I created a concert. On the rooftops in the town and in balconies
and in the streets, about 400 musicians were there. So both sides of the buffer zone.
Good. This was a concert. The music was maybe not that special. But the situation was very
special. And people who were there, they told me that they had actually never been an hour
or more close to that place, this place with just mines and barbed wire and many soldiers.
But now they were there. And they had a very fresh experience because they just looked at
it. They heard it and they heard something. They saw something that they had never seen
in that way. One moment the music went wrong. Some musicians didn't play. They were supposed
to play and I was very worried and nervous. But this silence, the sudden silence with
all the audience just listening and hearing, do I hear music or not? That was maybe the
most beautiful part. It was so touching just to hear the birds and the other side. I couldn't
have composed that better. But when journalists came to me and they asked me about it, I used
words. I told about equality, about brotherhood, bridging the gap, even peace. But peace is
a nice word to use for me. But it's something very different if you live in Cyprus. It means
disappointment. It means failure, even hypocrisy. Well, three weeks ago I was in Jerusalem,
the occupied part, the old town. And I created also a project there, many small concerts
in living rooms. And it was a very tense situation because many cultural events were
actually abandoned or disturbed by the Israeli army before this year. So in that situation
we created some music as a secret event. And then journalists came and asked, oh, that's
so great. You bring Israelis and Palestinians together. And I had to disappoint them and
I said, I cannot create peace. I can only create perception. And to create a peace project
here in this place, actually it will be a symbol for another failure. But to create
time, to create a situation where people come together, they listen, they sit down and they
experience their environment just in a fresh way, might create some openness and some contact.
Okay. We're here today as United Cleverness. And I think we don't need more brilliant ideas
because we have so many of them. We need a strategy to kind of make them work. And the
world is already so beautiful, so perfect. Solutions are there, the ideas are there.
It just doesn't work out like that. And we need to break through expectations, through
our patterns of behavior and our patterns of perception. So you're all communicators.
Why don't you have the courage to create openness and confusion without filling that openness,
the attention of people right away with your own truth? Because we don't need more empty
symbolism. We just need space and openness. And we need to let the subtle confusion, the
music of the real world, enter our reality. That's it. Thank you.
