I was sitting at Café Bravo with Armen the other day, talking strategy. My son Balthazar was with us, he had a cold and did not go to Kindergarten that day, and he was running in and out, pushing the heavy glas door of Café Bravo open to produce more and more shining soap bubbles, look, daddy, how high they fly, until he tripped the container holding the soap and continued running in and out, pushing the heavy glas door of Café Bravo, just for the sake of it.
I like Café Bravo, I even like the building, this glas pavillion by Dan Graham, I might very well be the only person I know who likes it. I don*t actually know why others don*t like it, maybe just for the sake of it, see Balthazar, maybe they have some criteria they will share with me at some point. And I am all for criteria, I am all for liking and especially not liking, I am all for not liking and still keep talking and in a way ignoring the not liking, because right or wrong is nonsense, but to ignore the question of right and wrong is wrong, so you better judge without being judgemental.
The pavillion, if you don*t know it, is this typical Dan Graham spiel, you get a little confused and a little annoyed, really without a point. This is pointless art, in a way, if it is art, and this is maybe why I like it. I mean, I don*t actively like it, I am just for it. What I really like are the photographs of his that I have at home, this series of pictures with men and women and a boy sitting in a diner somewhere between El Paso and New Haven, staring out onto Mainstreet America, wishing for something better, but unable to name it.
How to put your hand on life. How to hold something. How to move ahead. You are stuck, and you know it without really knowing it.
Maybe that was what we were talking about, Armen and me. Balthazar was looking in from the outside, he might or might not have seen us really well, there is this shining effect of the glas, he might have been a little confused, but that was part of the pointless game. He came to the door and almost got his fingers stuck in the door which might have caused some pain for him and some problems for me.
But he was clever enough not to get his hands stuck, so Armen and I could continue talking, really about the world as if it was a pavillion by Dan Graham: Why do we accept it as it is? Why is it so difficult to see things differently? Why is there such a need to see things differently? Can you call this a revolution? Can you call this freedom? What does it say about philosophy that there are a lot of good answers but not enough good questions?
And then we saw the rift.