In this video, we sit down with Stefan Simchowitz to discuss the launch of Hill House, his new art space in Pasadena, and his other projects, including his recent move into politics. We first met Stefan in 2010 during Portugal Arte 10, a major international contemporary art exhibition in Lisbon, Portugal, where he served as artistic director. Since then his ventures in the field of contemporary art evolved considerably. He started the a pop-up exhibition program called The Newsstand Project, provides industry specific art services via Creative Art Partners, and runs artist residencies in Los Angeles and Cape Town. There's also Simco Shop, Simco Editions, Simco Drops, Simco's Club – and Simco Audio, which plays a significant role in enjoying art at Hill House.
This video is the third in our series about Hill House. See also the video about the opening of Los Angeles-based artist Shaina McCoy's exhibition at Hill House and the Hill House Tour with Stefan Simchowitz.
Interview with Stefan Simchowitz. Pasadena, October 20, 2024.
This video is the third in our series about Hill House. See also the video about the opening of Los Angeles-based artist Shaina McCoy's exhibition at Hill House and the Hill House Tour with Stefan Simchowitz.
Interview with Stefan Simchowitz. Pasadena, October 20, 2024.
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FunTranscript
00:00Yeah, Stephan, thank you so much for having me here and your amazing Hill House.
00:08We just did a tour of your house where I showed you several structures.
00:15And what I would like to know is, you have a lot of different interests,
00:24a lot of different things going on.
00:31What I would like to know is, how do you put all these together?
00:36Or the other way around, how did it all come together? How did it start?
00:41So I think, you know, we're at Hill House and we're on a structure that has,
00:46there's eight different structures, all different.
00:49And each one functions like a chessboard.
00:52They do different things and they can do multiple things.
00:56And I think I built an art business that functions in a very similar way.
01:02The traditional art business is very linear and expected in its ambitions,
01:08its outcomes, its desires.
01:12And I've had to sort of think about building a structure to support artists,
01:17to distribute art, to generate revenue and income that's completely different.
01:22Not completely different, but has different aspects to the traditional business.
01:27And I think Hill House is an aesthetic expression of that.
01:32It's sort of an aesthetic, physical manifestation of that.
01:36There's eight separate buildings. They're all disjointed, but they all can come together.
01:40They're all linked with a pathway.
01:43Different people can do different things in different zones.
01:46There's a room that is an office space during the day and an exhibition space when there's an exhibition.
01:51You're in the front room, which we call it the garage, but it's an exhibition space.
01:56There's audio equipment everywhere, as you notice, where you can listen to beautiful music.
02:01Kind of, you know, make art inhabit a living and working space
02:06instead of this sort of static environment that you go to.
02:09The artwork is static and objectified and commodified in a sort of perfect state.
02:16And I think out of necessity and creativity,
02:22we've been forced to develop a very different structure for how business operates.
02:27For a number of reasons.
02:29One, I have not accepted what I call the rules of the game.
02:33You know, there's like a rule book you get when you enter the art business.
02:37And you're like, boom! And every business has a rule book.
02:41And it's different to a set of laws.
02:44It's more a rule book that defines social engagements within a group of people who participate in a business.
02:50It has nothing to do with the legal operation of the business.
02:55In fact, sometimes it's in contravention of the legal operation of a business.
03:00It's like a code.
03:02And when I read that book, you know, proverbially read the book,
03:07I was like, huh, there's a lot of stuff this book doesn't make sense to me.
03:10So I kind of took it and I'm like, I threw it in the dustbin.
03:14I'm like, I'm going to write my own book of rules
03:16and I'm going to engage with artists and culture in a way that I see fit
03:21and I think is better, more equal, more humane, more open, less homogenized.
03:33A heterodox approach as opposed to an orthodox approach to the business.
03:37And slowly, systematically, we've done this.
03:40You met me 15 years ago when I was really at the beginning of that journey.
03:44Always trying to do things that were ambitious, you know, large scale.
03:49And this is where we are today.
03:53And I think the core innovation that we've made around 2014-15,
03:59I was approached by Ted Chauvin, who was an old friend of mine who was a very powerful movie agent, talent agent.
04:07Packaging agent, packaged shows like Chairs and Friends.
04:10One of the most successful TV agents of all time.
04:13And he had taken over a company called ICM and they moved into these offices and they needed work.
04:21And Mark Selwyn, generously, a very traditional gallerist in LA,
04:26basically realized that there was no way he could service them because they needed 800 works of art.
04:32And he introduced me, he said to Ted, they should speak to me.
04:37And they called me and I ended up renting them art for their offices in Los Angeles, in New York.
04:43And this was really the beginning of an innovative business called Creative Art Partners
04:48that I founded with a partner of mine named Brian Ludlow,
04:52which today has hundreds of people renting art from us in different divisions
04:57and thousands of works in the field being rented, seen, distributed in an efficient way.
05:03Really looking at the cost structure is how can you get people art very inexpensively.
05:10It's really the polar opposite of the art world where you try and capture huge margins.
05:15How do you provide a service using art and really make razor thin margins from that service,
05:23but do it at volume and try to get art outside of the, not necessarily outside of the establishment,
05:29but into people's homes where they don't have to think about it as an important financial decision
05:35every time they buy a work on paper or a painting.
05:38And I think what's happened in the art business as things have gotten more expensive
05:43and galleries have focused on servicing an increasingly partisan community
05:50of wealthy versus non-wealthy people.
05:53So they've customized their art solutions to extremely expensive art
05:57that they rather sell to the very people with a lot of money because they make a bigger margin
06:03because the cost structure is so bloated, the art fair structure, the gallery structure.
06:07You open a small gallery, you need a bigger gallery.
06:09You open a bigger gallery, you need a bigger gallery.
06:11You need a bigger gallery, you need a mega gallery.
06:13And this is why the artists have this idea that by moving from a small gallery to a big gallery,
06:18your career is enhanced.
06:20I don't believe any of this to be true.
06:23And I also don't believe that the big galleries represent, exhibit, or show the best art in the world.
06:28I think quite the opposite, in fact.
06:30I think art is so illegible and so difficult to read for most people
06:35because it's a language that's very difficult to understand
06:38that money has been the mechanism through which the system makes art legible.
06:45And the irony of the system is it's built on a post-war structure that's very linear.
06:51The institutions give art its value by recognizing them and showing them.
06:56The big galleries service the institutions.
06:58The writers service the galleries and the art fair.
07:01But somehow in the 80s when money and capital loosened up and began to invade the business,
07:08these apparatuses that were very useful in constructing the post-war history of art
07:13in an environment where there was less money
07:16and also the artists hadn't even produced yet,
07:20became infected and taken over by capital.
07:23As capital took over the markets,
07:26instead of getting rid of these institutional establishments,
07:29they just became transformed into something else.
07:31Institutions no longer became places of experimentation and exhibition
07:36and growth.
07:39They became essentially ratings agencies for artworks like Goldman Sachs rates Ford
07:45or they rate NVIDIA or buy Tesla.
07:48It's going up.
07:49The institutions and the board members,
07:53and it's not in a conspiracy form,
07:55it began to basically become literally like Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs,
08:00Morgan Stanley's got a buy rating on Jonas Word
08:03and we're putting a sell rating on Mark Rocha
08:05and that's their performance.
08:06And the galleries then use the institutions in service of their needs.
08:12This is what's happened.
08:13You have this global inequality,
08:17which I think is the greatest threat to the West personally.
08:23I think it's a greater threat than China or Russia or anything.
08:27And I also believe on a political basis,
08:29what you see in Gaza and Ukraine,
08:31the conflicts around the world,
08:34they have their specific geographic specificity to them,
08:38but they all emerge out of one very core root, inequality.
08:43Poor people suppressed and rich people gaining power,
08:47huge amounts of private capital and private power basically.
08:50And in the art world, this expresses itself in a homogenized,
08:56almost absurdist, ridiculous system of distribution today
09:01where the art fairs and the dinners look like scenes from Hunger Games,
09:07and not the nice side of Hunger Games,
09:09like the cliched side of Hunger Games.
09:12And the self-awareness of the collecting class,
09:16the gallery class, the promoting class,
09:19has literally like left the room completely.
09:24And what it's been replaced by is this sort of
09:28moralizing kind of do-gooding,
09:31like we're going to say one thing and do another.
09:34And what I'm really interested in doing is,
09:36how do we get the art out there?
09:38How do we cut through this jungle of capital?
09:42How do we use the system of capital to,
09:45because the capital system is the system that rules us,
09:48money does rule us.
09:49But how do you, as a Trojan horse, turn it upside down?
09:53It's almost like when you give a kid medicine,
09:56when kids are young, you don't give them a pill.
10:00The pill is wrapped in, it's pink or green and it's sweet,
10:04so they think they're eating bubble gum, but they're getting medicine.
10:07How do you give this apparatus the medicine it needs
10:11without it knowing that it's getting the medicine it needs?
10:14And the way you do that is with price.
10:16Instead of increasing the price and getting huge margins,
10:20you lower the price to such a degree
10:22that people don't need to be concerned with investing in art,
10:25whether it's going to appreciate ownership in art,
10:28using art as a trophy,
10:29but they'll get back to their roots of using art for what it does,
10:33which is it decorates things, it makes your life better,
10:37and it gives you ideas, but without forcing those ideas.
10:42So the art business says, art is not meant to be decorative,
10:45it's too ethnic, it's too feminine,
10:47it's meant to give you purpose and meaning,
10:49so they can get huge price structure and sell you stuff that is ugly.
10:52They've sort of taken the vitamin C out of the orange juice
10:56and given you the red color,
10:57and I believe that by going back to the basics and being like,
11:01you know what, and this is why Hill House is so interesting,
11:04because the art lives within a lifestyle space
11:09and a heavily curated lifestyle space
11:11where there's music and audio and furniture and sofas,
11:14that sort of says, no, art's okay, you can live with it,
11:18art can be decorative, it can provide a lifestyle component.
11:21But at the same time, it can be that medicine.
11:24So this is sort of the aesthetic, intellectual representation
11:29of many of these ideas that I'm executing on the business side
11:32in our rental business, Creative Art Partners,
11:35our new audio business, Simcoe Audio,
11:37where we sell audio equipment and we manufacture some items directly,
11:42and then of course the exhibition side, gallery side,
11:45artist financing side, which is,
11:47and I don't even like to call it a management side,
11:50because I think the idea of managing artists is incorrect.
11:53It's a financing management system.
11:56There's no such thing as managing artists
11:59to take a percentage of their revenue.
12:01It comes with financing, and I know that there are people
12:04who have explored artist management without financing,
12:07like we're going to pay your car insurance and get you a lawyer.
12:11Artists need capital. They're factories.
12:13That's all an artist is.
12:15An artist studio is an artisanal factory of production,
12:18and that factory requires financing,
12:20something I've been doing probably since you met me
12:23or started learning how to do it.
12:25It's very complex because every artist has different structures,
12:30ways of working, personalities, disorders, orders, relationships,
12:34and that's kind of the meta picture of what we're doing.
12:38Yeah, it's not only that.
12:43I mean, you brought together over the years
12:47so many different things you can say, okay,
12:52but it feels homogeneous.
12:55It's not like this is something odd.
12:59On the contrary, it's something that you miss sometimes
13:03from the regular galleries.
13:07I mean, here you can really take your time to watch out,
13:13and no one is watching over your shoulder
13:16or you don't feel observed by someone.
13:18Well, you don't feel that you're organized into a social group.
13:23So I think the white box,
13:25although it's been useful for creating context,
13:27what it does when you throw capital into the white box,
13:30the white box becomes an immediate empty social space
13:34in which when you walk into the space,
13:36you immediately go to where power is
13:40or where you perceive power to be,
13:42and everyone is visible to everyone.
13:43So I think we look at the white box,
13:45artists look at it, oh, I'm exhibiting my art.
13:47The only thing in the box is my art.
13:49This is the most important thing.
13:50I'm the most important thing.
13:51But what happens when you've injected money into it,
13:54and when I say money, excessive amounts of money,
13:57that white box no longer becomes a space for artists.
14:02It becomes a social space for hierarchy and social hierarchy.
14:09And the minute you walk into that room, you're organized.
14:12Heinrich Schmidt suddenly becomes,
14:16not the founder of Vernissage TV
14:18and the creator of 4,000 hours of art historical,
14:21the critical footage that he edited
14:24and has done not just for money,
14:26but as a labor for love
14:27because you could have done things for more money.
14:30You become on this pecking order
14:32because the only thing that's legible to people
14:34is how much money do you have.
14:35That's it. That's legible to everyone.
14:37It's a very easy thing to read.
14:38You can be 12 years old,
14:40and you can have a guy next to a pile of cash.
14:42You can be 90 with a PhD.
14:44It's legible.
14:45So you immediately get put in your box.
14:47You don't become Heinrich Schmidt from Vernissage TV.
14:49You become the weird Swiss guy that people don't know.
14:53And then people aggregate to power.
14:54So you're organized, so you feel uncomfortable
14:56because you can't sit.
14:57There's no space.
14:58And you're disconnected from the art almost immediately.
15:01That's why you leave these gallery spaces,
15:04and 95% of people feel like shit.
15:075% of people look good
15:08because Mr. Kodansky is giving you attention.
15:11Mr. Gagosian is giving Jeff Bezos attention.
15:14Mr. Zwirner is smiling upon you.
15:16But there's no grace.
15:17There's no gratitude.
15:18There's very little equality of treatment
15:21and equality of space where you're not observed.
15:24No one is observing you here.
15:26You are in a space whereby you can interact
15:30in a way privately and intimately
15:32and have someone come in.
15:34So I think you can look at the white box space
15:38no longer as a space for artists
15:40but a space for organizing power, capital,
15:43and social hierarchy.
15:45And this is the shift.
15:47And this happened because of this extreme,
15:52extraordinary dislocation in society of inequality
15:57which is present now in almost every engagement in the system.
16:00How do you reverse that?
16:02And I think these are questions like on a meta level
16:04I'd like to try and answer.
16:07I think it's a genius idea to focus on audio.
16:11It goes very well with watching art
16:15because you can really relax.
16:17You can listen to the music, the sound
16:20for maybe half an hour, maybe an hour.
16:23And you can take your time and then watch
16:27comfortably the art.
16:29And then it's a much better experience
16:33than if you walk in a white box
16:35and you're okay.
16:37Most people, they spend five seconds
16:39in a white box and then they go out.
16:41Yeah, it distracts you.
16:43It engages you again.
16:45The one thing that is very legible to people is music
16:47because it's a language that we all understand.
16:50We live with it as children.
16:53People know how to read music
16:57almost as well as they know how to read money
16:59which is a good thing.
17:01And I think associatively by providing music
17:04it fills the empty space.
17:06And even if you're alone in a room with music
17:09you are having a conversation
17:11and you're not alone.
17:13You're not being watched because you're listening.
17:15And I think one of the things that's interesting watching
17:17is I sometimes don't even tell people
17:19this is so-and-so, sit down, listen.
17:21And then 20 minutes later, who's that artist?
17:24I really like it.
17:26You don't have to tell them.
17:28Like I went to a gallery.
17:30I can be somewhat...
17:32I went to a gallery
17:34and the first thing I walked in
17:36the gallerist sort of walked up to me
17:38and gave me a PDF and said
17:40this is so-and-so
17:42and he's in the museum show.
17:44I'm like, I haven't even had a chance
17:46of looking at the work.
17:48And you haven't even asked me
17:50if I like the work.
17:52It's just like, because if I say
17:54I don't like the work after you've told me
17:56this work was just exhibited in three museums
17:58I sound like a moron.
18:00And immediately they've put me in this.
18:02So if I don't like the work
18:04and he's told me this, I can't even tell the truth
18:06because it's...
18:08So I think letting people discover work,
18:10engaging with it,
18:12flipping everything upside down on its head
18:14like disrupting that
18:16linear transaction point
18:18which is interesting.
18:22What I also like is
18:24I think you also have residencies
18:26here but also in South Africa.
18:28Yeah, we do.
18:30We have a couple of residency programs.
18:32You met Cameron Platter who arrived today.
18:34You should interview him before you leave.
18:36He's in MoMA, he's an amazing artist.
18:38He's here for a month on residency.
18:40We have a gallery
18:42and a residency space in Pasadena
18:44five minutes away from here
18:46so artists can stay here, work there.
18:48We have the Cape Town Art Residency
18:50that's run by David Altman who's here.
18:52Maybe you could interview him and Ben Johnson.
18:54Ben Johnson's my lead designer.
18:56He designs all the creative assets for us.
18:58Cameron Platter is an amazing artist.
19:00He's here, just came in last night
19:02and David Altman runs that
19:04and we do something interesting in South Africa
19:06is we bring in international artists
19:08from England to South Africa
19:10so it's not just there to get
19:12African artists working, it's also there to bring
19:14people, foreign artists to Africa
19:16to engage.
19:18It's a great program.
19:20It's very beautiful.
19:22David should speak to you about it.
19:24We have the residency program here
19:28and then we articulate
19:30residencies in other places as well.
19:36We have an additions business.
19:38These actually are all additions that we produced.
19:42This is a
19:44UV dimensional addition which is
19:46textured.
19:48This is just a print.
19:50This is a screen print so we have an additions business.
19:52We've done a number of additions.
19:54They don't sell particularly well
19:56but
19:58I built
20:00a business where I don't need to sell art
20:02to stay in business and this is the trick
20:04because selling art to this class of people
20:06is extremely difficult
20:08and difficult
20:10in the sense that in order to do so
20:12you need the ratings agencies,
20:14the institutions and the
20:16art fairs on board and if you don't have
20:18their buy-in
20:20you're in trouble
20:22and I will never, ever
20:24fight for their buy-in.
20:26I will never degrade myself
20:28to their
20:30obsequiousness
20:32and their structures.
20:34I'll build my own business, my own distribution system.
20:36It'll be parallel to the system
20:38and eventually I believe it'll be
20:40big enough that it will become the new system
20:42and that's my goal.
20:44See if I can execute it or if I'm
20:46Don Quixote
20:48from, you know,
20:50chasing windmills. History
20:52will tell.
20:54Another question.
20:56I think you have an economics background.
20:58Yeah. Tell me about that.
21:00Did you
21:02were you immediately
21:04in the beginning
21:06were you from the start interested
21:08in art or first in economics
21:10and then...
21:12I was always interested in art. My mother's an artist.
21:14I always took pictures.
21:16When I was young, I wasn't really interested in art.
21:18I'm from South Africa. It's not like you don't think
21:20I'm going to be a... I mean, at least then.
21:22I was interested in the movie business. I went to
21:24boarding school in Connecticut when I
21:26was 15. Went to Stanford
21:28undergrad and was at Stanford
21:30I was bored. They had laser discs then
21:32and I started watching movies. A friend of mine
21:34went to film school. He was a year ahead of me. He gave me
21:36some John Woo movies,
21:38you know, the Hong Kong action. I started
21:40watching movies.
21:42I fell in love with movies and I decided to
21:44go to AFI and make movies.
21:46So I think the movie business happened first.
21:48Then I got into
21:50this company called Wire Image
21:52and I sort of learned distribution
21:54content and art was always
21:56in the background but always inaccessible.
21:58Then I lived in New York. I worked for a guy.
22:00I helped him run his family
22:02money and I'd start going to galleries.
22:04I'd go to Jeffrey Deitch every day.
22:06It was around the corner and that's when the
22:08art business sort of started to sort of...
22:10But it came much later.
22:12I never even imagined it as a
22:14business. And also when I was 19
22:16I was best friends with an older
22:18gentleman named Jim Corcoran. He's a
22:20famous dealer of Ed Ruscha.
22:22He was partners with Mnuchin in
22:24New York, CNM Arts. He bought all the Mark Rothko's.
22:26So
22:28it was there and I was friends with
22:30Ruscha in my early 20s and I met the guys
22:32but it took me a lot of time before that
22:34became...
22:36You know, some people
22:38they know exactly what
22:40they want to do. I think what happened to me
22:42is like I assembled a bunch
22:44of skills in different businesses that were
22:46all content related, all distribution
22:48related, all creative related and
22:50they kind of like slowly
22:52like came together.
22:54I was telling someone yesterday
22:56that like the way for me business
22:58works, I have an impulse
23:00an instinct, a feeling
23:02and it's like really blurry. It's like
23:04being in a jungle and you just see like a little
23:06light here and slowly you cut through
23:08and you see more light but it's still not clear
23:10but you go forward and then
23:12it kind of opens up and it's clear.
23:14Your instinct kind of guides you to it.
23:16I tell my son who's 16
23:18he's like what do I... I'm like don't worry about
23:20what you do and he asks good questions.
23:22People ask him what he wants to do
23:24in life and what's so
23:26wise about him, he starts talking about what
23:28values he wants to have.
23:30He doesn't talk about what he wants to do
23:32but he immediately starts describing
23:34the values he wants to have in his
23:36life. Doesn't talk about what
23:38but the values. You build the values
23:40and then you can build the what.
23:42And I say to him, you exercise
23:44for this, you learn this for this but
23:46it doesn't have to come together for a purpose.
23:48It'll form itself into
23:50a structure that you will implement
23:52as you get older. It'll come together.
23:54So for me
23:56the path
23:58kind of
24:00I've always been
24:02aesthetic. I've always
24:04loved beauty, I've always loved
24:06ideas,
24:08everything around cultural content.
24:10And then figuring out
24:12in a world
24:14really where culture
24:16is
24:18especially in America
24:20where everyone wants to do everything cheap
24:22and at scale. There's
24:24really and I've always thought this, there's a war
24:26on culture.
24:28It's like and it's always frustrated
24:30me because in businesses, even the audio
24:32business, the art business
24:34everyone fights with each other
24:36over this sort of small business. Instead of figuring
24:38out how to expand the business and
24:40be innovative with your product offerings
24:42and try to get the culture out there.
24:44Like how do you
24:46expand the culture? Not how
24:48do you service the billionaire but how
24:50do you expand it? And I think that's
24:52interesting to me. Like what kind of
24:54steps can you take in business
24:56to make things and I don't like the
24:58words democratizing art or making
25:00accessible. But how do you
25:02make the process
25:04engageable for more people?
25:06You know, many more people.
25:08And it'll never be something that's
25:10engageable for everyone but
25:12even engageable amongst the elites because
25:14most of the elites aren't interested in it. So within
25:16the elites you have a huge structure in which to
25:18expand. You know.
25:20Within the elites there's
25:22the poor, the rich and the
25:24middle.
25:26You talked about values. That leads me to
25:28another question. You ran for
25:30Senate.
25:32I ran for United States Senate.
25:34Why did you do that?
25:36I have a friend, Jack Kimball, he works
25:38for me. He's a really smart guy.
25:40And he said, you know, Dianne Feinstein
25:42is giving up her seat. She passed.
25:44It's an open seat. It's called a jungle primary.
25:46And it was just one opportunity
25:48where
25:50I could do it.
25:52I figured I'd just try it.
25:54Why not? One life to live to see how it
25:56works. No chance of winning.
25:58But in life
26:00you do things
26:02not to win. You do things to do things.
26:04And it was a really interesting
26:06process. I like learning
26:08and I feel like learning is
26:10a contact sport. You want
26:12to learn how a turntable works? Buy
26:14a vintage turntable.
26:16You learn how a phonostage works?
26:18Buy the wrong phonostage.
26:20Put the wrong needle.
26:22You want to learn how something
26:24works? Try it. You break it.
26:26You want to learn
26:28about records? Go buy records.
26:30Go to the swap meeting.
26:32It's very
26:34much about if I'm going to vote for someone
26:36and if I'm going to have an opinion, by doing it
26:38you learn a lot. So you become informed.
26:40And it helped me a lot in
26:42forming
26:44a lot of my opinions.
26:46And I really do believe
26:48the greatest threat to democracy
26:50is inequality.
26:52I can't tell you how much I believe
26:54that. It's something that has destroyed
26:56nations, empires
26:58in the past.
27:00And I love America.
27:02I love South Africa. It's my home.
27:04I want to contribute.
27:06I'm relatively 54
27:08but young.
27:10And I think
27:12I don't know what the future brings but I have a strange
27:14feeling I'm going to build a very
27:16very big business.
27:18And a very interesting business that engages with people
27:20in a very different way.
27:22And I want to do this practice run
27:24maybe in my 60s when I have more
27:26capital, more resources.
27:28Maybe I can figure out
27:30how to
27:32constantly learn.
27:34At UCLA I met Cal Restiola from the Berkel Center.
27:36Trying to just keep myself
27:38educated and current. So if something happens
27:40if I'm called for something
27:42that I need
27:44to do, I'm ready for it.
27:46I may never be called but I'm ready.
27:48So I'm interested
27:50in Lao Tzu, Confucian
27:52early Confucius writing.
27:54Which is the path
27:56of learning.
27:58And the idea
28:00from early Confucian philosophy is that
28:02in life
28:04learning is not something you do
28:06because you have
28:08a goal. Like in America
28:10everything you do is like well how are you going to make money
28:12from that?
28:14It's part of
28:16what you should do in life.
28:18The walking the path
28:20is more important than the destination.
28:22And Lao Tzu
28:24and that
28:26sort of path of learning
28:28is very important to me.
28:30And I think it then
28:32informs every aspect of your life.
28:34Everything.
28:36Do you
28:38you said you're waiting for the opportunity
28:40but do you have an idea
28:42what to do next?
28:44In the political arena?
28:46I don't know.
28:48I mean it's like it's blurry.
28:50It's blurry but I feel
28:54it's instinctive.
28:56I feel something's coming.
28:58I don't know what.
29:00But I think
29:02the art world has
29:04taken I believe a very
29:06hostile approach to my activities.
29:08And which
29:10has been very helpful to me because it's maybe very well
29:12known in the art world
29:14with little expense for marketing.
29:16I haven't had to go to art fairs. I haven't had to
29:18do the same things. But I think
29:20I think
29:22life is strange.
29:24And
29:26I just have this instinct that at some
29:28point something's going to call upon
29:30me to do something really serious.
29:32And when that happens
29:34I want to be prepared.
29:36It may never happen but
29:38somehow in the back of my
29:40in the back of my head
29:42it's there.
29:44For some reason.
29:46And until then you have
29:48this great space.
29:50Until then I have this.
29:52It's really impressive.
29:54Thank you so much.
29:56I also spoke to several
29:58artists that are here and also
30:00visitors and they are
30:02blown away because
30:04this is really a unique experience.
30:08It's a great space to relax.
30:10To not think
30:12about anything.
30:14If you happen to think about something
30:16when you hear this music and
30:20have a look at the painting
30:22it happens as you said.
30:24It happens. It comes naturally.
30:26It's nothing that you
30:28don't feel any
30:30pressure to behave
30:32in a certain way.
30:34You can be home. You've been here for
30:36hours. You guys came here at 11
30:38and you see a lot
30:40of people. It's very nice.
30:42Give people time.
30:44Provide them an experience
30:46that's sort of
30:48holistic and organic.
30:52My pleasure.
30:54Do you have something that you want to add?
31:00Do I have something I want to add?
31:02Not really.
31:04I just want to be in service.
31:06I almost said you have a political
31:08statement.
31:10No, it's not.
31:12I want to be in service.
31:14I want to see a fairer
31:16world
31:18where I think culture
31:20is very important
31:22because I think it
31:24enables people
31:26a pathway to
31:28creative thinking, better thinking,
31:30more logical thinking
31:34and that's my calling.
31:36I want to figure out that mousetrap
31:38and we're figuring it out
31:40slowly.
31:42Maybe not so slowly.
31:44Thanks so much.
31:46Thank you, Heinrich.
31:48I just want to say
31:50my political statement is
31:52watch Vernissage TV. It's an amazing resource.