Berlin, January 10, 1996

I am trying to get to know this Josef Knecht. I calculated that I need at least 18 hours to get to know him, so I spend until 3:30pm in bed as if he was a new lover. I woke up at 6 and immediately started to take him in my hands and started to absorb....Josef Knecht is a figure in the Glassbeadgame, he is the leader of the game and finally gets lost in it. Beads, glassbeads are sort of sculptural and non sculptural at the same time. Most of the beads or pearls don't give you any orientation, you turn them and you don't really know were you are. When you try to comprehend or see a sculpture it is clear were you are, you see and watch it from all the different sides and in the end you get a more complete view of this three dimensional object, a view composed or put together out of all these different views. This cannot really happen the same way when you have an image a painting in front of you. Unless, the picture links to another image which leads into another thought another text...text gets to be three-dimensional, sculptural, although you often don't really know were you are. When you look at a pearl or a glassbead it can open worlds and insights but it is difficult to orient yourself in a unit, because orientation is dependent on poles, the circle has no direction but a line is between the poles, goes from right to left. If we want to stay in this metaphor, strings of beads can have again a linear orientation. So you put them together as strings and again you have an orientation, you might even be able to count them as they are in line and you go from north to south or so... but the part of the string the units, the string is made out of, remains to be secret and you may miss the best part, the unit remains special and without real orientation. Is it maybe even comparable with mankind, as the individual is difficult to get to know but the group is more easy to analyze direct and play with as they give the order of something that is chaotic as a solo-unit. Well, it was only a question.