Question: What is Love?

What is Love?

Everybody knows what is an artist’s book… But do you know, what is Love? Do you think you have the answer? Please write to us.

The first texts about Love wrote the jury members:

“Piece of Cake”

I considered it an easy task to say something about LOVE when you first asked; Piece of cake so to speak. My opinion in 5-7 sentences … come on, how hard can it be?

Well, hard enough it seems! Everything I’ve tried to express so far looks either simple and dull, awkward, pathetic, pretentious, or childish and silly – simply everything but experienced, convincing, shrewd, bright, etc. So I have to honestly admit: When it comes to LOVE I’m only a beginner. A plain apprentice who can’t even claim that LOVE always works just well in my own life. And worse: suddenly it seems I can’t even express my opinion in reasonable words and terms. The subject’s so fragile I can’t unfold it – verbally – in a way that I feel satisfies my own perception.

Hanne Matthiesen
Denmark

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“Love is the thing that makes the world go round”

Love is the inexplicable force in organized matter that unconditionally drives entities towards one another – without a sense of purpose, and with no other drive than from that force – more often than not, and with no obvious gain to the one or the other party, resulting in a continuation of the group/matter that the entities are part of.

Love is a primary force to secure continuation – it annihilates effects of set-back in the secondary level to occur during the process.

Love is what makes entities, in the grander scheme of things, to the perpetuum mobile of being.

Being is essence. Love is essential to being, so much so that Love must be essence.

Being Is (as an essence it cannot stop or change – it has no half-life); and as such being is love.

Being is the material essence – Love is immaterial essence; they both make IS.

Joseph Johannes Visser
The Netherlands

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“Think of the book as a metaphor for love…”

‘The metaphors of the book are metaphors of containment, of exteriority and interiority, of surface and depth, of covering and exposure, of taking apart and putting together.’  Susan Stewart, ‘On Longing’, Duke University Press 1993.

Deirdre Kelly
Italy / UK

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“Give Love a Chance*”

Love. And hate. Which to choose? Can I choose? Maybe I can’t choose anything, I can only be. Watch. Listen. Without looking. Taking no interest. But that gets on my nerves. I don’t agree; I totally disagree. I’m opposed, since I’m overcome by anger. If I choose nothing, it chooses me; and my heart and mind are flooded with hate. I’m an old person, tired of the anger and lies of life; I choose love. Not because I would like it. I simply have nothing else to choose. I am convinced that since we are here, it’s not much of a choice. I chose because, to be honest, I had no other option. The subject of this exhibition is “Love”. A silly and hopeless subject, when all around us war is raging, the bloody ‘spring’ has become an even bloodier winter, with coercion, starvation and excess. “Love” is a nice word, but what can we produce for such a topic? A moral anachronism? What is love? A falling star. Nice… You see it and full of joy you say: “Oh…”. But it’s already gone. And it’s dark again.

“Love”. It’s strange, and these days you could say it’s almost an infantile subject for an exhibition. Even stranger are those who have decided to take part in the “6th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2012”. Maybe it’s simply a matter of them choosing to “give love a chance”. Maybe they are the ones who look at the sky, waiting for falling stars. I don’t know. I have no answer. But I am thankful to them.

*John Lennon “Give Peace a Chance”

Kestutis Vasiliunas
Lithuania

© Circle “Bokartas”, Kestutis Vasiliunas