Systemically relevant art and cultural institutions can endanger entire popular cultures in the event of a disorderly failure and are therefore considered “too big to fail”.

In order to show and demonstrate that art is systemically relevant and should not simply be played around with, Die Diebe, i.e. Lili Vanilly and Bujar Berisha, are having a sculpture park created with Shuk Orani. The first sculptures are expected in early 2022. The starting shot has been fired and preparations have already begun. Wood, stones, metals and other materials are available. There will be carving, drilling, hammering and chiseling. To no discipline shall stand anything in the way. We are never complete, for only in constant renewal is stability and thus also the future assured. So we are always open to new artists. The park has plenty of space and there are no limits to artistic growth, unlike the natural resources on our planet.

Art is relevant to the system because it has the possibility to criticise the system outside of it.

Copernicus was an artist. If he had gone within or after the system, he would never have overturned a system. It was one of the egocentric or homocentric systems, quite effectively overruled with the artwork of the telescope as evidence. In the meantime, this telescope limits us again and no longer frees us; hardly anyone dares to step out of it.

Artists ensure the progress, the improvement or overcoming of a system. Not only do they document it (Picasso, Guernica, Spanish Civil War, depiction of the Civil War in an artistic way), rob it (Banksy, Hacker, Marylin Manson), criticise it (Dali, Beuys, Einstein, Chaplin) and set trends (Marx, The Beatles). Instead, they don’t believe in the system in the first place. They create a distance between themselves and the system and its systems in order to reflect and thus question. That is why they live dangerously. Because the separating – especially thanks to Macchiaveli – and evaluating system has the advantage that it can create space and time for the system implementers, i.e. the rulers, and any criticism of it is a danger to their power: space and time.

Thus, art and those who create art are not only relevant to the system but also a regulatory mechanism; and no system survives if it is closed off from the outside world, i.e. if it has no regulatory mechanism. Art is the membrane of systems, constantly in contact with the outside world and thus in exchange, in order to understand, to live better and to survive. By interacting outside the systems, artists can realise that, for example, the money system is no longer important or even harmful and work out a new idea.

To achieve this is also possible outside the ways of the systems, i.e. even without having studied in a recognised way or having a doctorate, because systemic education is again a mechanism of others to my time and space, which I have to escape in order to be. Questioning the system is quite easily forgotten in ordinary education, although that is the very purpose of education: to educate oneself in order to be able to question – with the love of knowledge.

In this way, we can decide whether we want to be tools or creators of art.

It is in this sense and with this aim that the sculpture park “too big to fail” is being created.

With this awareness that art was and still is systemically relevant, works are to be created to demonstrate and show that art is systemically relevant. The way of presentation and the approach are up to the artists. In any case, everyone should ask themselves this question: Why is and should my work be and remain systemically relevant?”

Would you like to see the sculpture park grow bigger and more robust? You can donate to it here: IBAN: CH46 0839 0035 1026 1000 8, Verein Die Diebe, Baselstrasse 61a, 6003 Luzern.

And join in: lili@diediebe.ch