Exhibition in the context of world music at Sentitreff and Lucerne Festival, August 2023

Paradise is not a place. It is an idea, a wish, a conception. It can never be true and exist with us, it can also not be experienced after death, because our existence requires a striving.

This striving exists only through dissatisfaction.

Since dissatisfaction makes us strive, it is satisfaction that brings us tranquility. Thus, we strive all our life for tranquility, perfection and happiness, without any prospect of achieving these goals.

We could live as a society so rich, free and unconcerned – thereby the great, general discontent seems absurd. The impossibility of existence without striving makes us invent diseases in an actually saturated environment.

Only non-existence can be paradise. We assume to be in paradise after death because then there is no more striving. But what does not strive cannot live. We assume to be in paradise after death because then there is no more striving. But what does not strive cannot live.

We have nevertheless the idea.

We can understand paradise differently and make it attainable.

A snapshot holds everything and makes any striving impossible. Thus what it shows becomes paradise. Every photograph, every documentation, every selfie, every thought and every capture is paradisiacal. Or a hell never ending.

From a religious point of view, God created us in his image and thus also gave us the ability to create paradises and hells.

We Diebe have chosen to show the most paradisiacal conditions. Because we do what we want more of.

The landscapes and bodies depicted are our immediate surroundings, our living world, in which we try to find paradise every day, and thanks to which we occasionally dip into paradisiacal feelings.

With love
Die Diebe
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