A series of lucky events...

A  family of mongolian nomads lost a horse.
What bad luck!
Three days later it came back with a new friend, a wildhorse.
What luck!
The son tried to tame it and fell and broke a leg.
What bad luck!
Three days later the army arrived in the yurte. They recruited all the young men for war except those with a broken leg.
What luck!

A series of lucky events have paved the way for the Stiftung „Wunderland“/Fondation „Pays des Merveilles“ to acquire the property La Corbière on 01. 01 2006. A long series of less fortunate events led to the fact that the former country home of the Duchess of Pourtalès, then Horticultural School for well-off young ladies and later boarding school for young catholic men, remained empty for 10 years.
Could I allow a new chapter in the difficult history of this house to be written by allowing a permanent living quarters to be accomodated in these same walls? I believe a pause is necessary, so that a second chapter can be written in this place.

To make a break, I have formed the jour par jour companie 2006 together with the cultural manager Christoph Balmer from Bern and the Penzel-Mogi family who have been living in a circus wagon in the Park since August 2005. They should fill the gap that this property needs with new and fresh energy.

What is more fitting than Art? Art is to harness coincidence, to square the circle, or to put it simpler, to piss in the corner in a round room. This we could try! The fascination of this attempt,  la Corbiére village nomade, is its impermanence and its uniqueness. It combines the self-interest of those involved with the non-profit exchange with others from outside.

One comes from somewhere and wants to go somewhere and one cannot hide the fact that the conditions in which one is  at the moment are confusing almost forest –like. One is lost, a feeling that is normal nowadays. One starts to look for a way out.

Now there is the possibility to look for the source, for one’s true self, for the point where one began to take the wrong track. The danger: one looses oneself backwards or inside.
Then there is the possiblity to march straight ahead to reach where one thought one belongs – growth, progress. The danger: one looses oneself forwards or outside.

The third possiblity : to settle down at the place where one is lost at the moment without caring about the source or the goal, to make a clearing. Clearing: the liveable temporary arrangement, living in aberrations, the triumph of beginning at the place, here and now, a free spot with a view to the heavens , surrounded by the forest of civilisation but which is kept at a distance.

The tranquility of keeping ones distance is based on the premise that history in general does not aim for any goal which will be reached in the imminent future. History is no journey which one takes like a train trip where one could miss the connection. History is always there, at every moment it is on target. And as far as the long-term plans and projects are concerned one must always be prepared that things will turn out differently than planned. In the undergrowth of stories there is no plan that can‘t be changed. History is the result of numerous single intentions which cross each other, twist around, and distract. Therefore one can only take action in a struggle with limited prospects, a mixture of coincidences, compromises, madness, cleverness and habit. Instead of making history, Mankind is tangled up in stories and reacts to them so that new stories emerge. History is a bundle of stories and therefore notoriously complicated. To make a clearing here means, finding ones own story within the mass of stories, holding on energetically and letting the threads weave in your consciousness so that one‘s own story will get entwined in the tangle of stories and vanish in the end.