It's difficult to talk seriously...

I find it difficult to talk seriously...

I do find it very difficult to have a serious discussion with people who think that their God created the first man on earth and that after a very quick peopling of the planet, chose a dozen small tribes to be the only ones on earth not to be mistaken about… let’s say... everything. It is difficult. Even with those who think these were stories God had to tell them when they were not as clever as today, when he had to speak through semi-true parables, it is difficult... This divine election is something one gets through ones mother and is symbolically worn by men having the top of their knob cut off.
Today, it’s probable that most of those who claimed to belong to God’s elected people do not believe all that is written in their holly book but believe in God - roughly.
Apart from their own children, these people never pushed others to think like them.

The other people I find difficult to talk with are those who assert that this God, the only one again, suddenly changed his mind during the roman occupation of Palestine. At this point he decided it was time to take care of all mankind and not only his elected tribes by making a virgin miraculously pregnant with a semi-god who would end up crucified to save the whole mankind, thus carrying a message of piece and love. From that moment on, people who could believe in him and teh whole story were saved after their death and for eternity when all the others would suffer forever in hell. This is a difficult subject matter, and I’ve tried very hard. I'm always ready to try the leap of faith, but I never end up at the right place. This group of people, unlike the first one did all they could, with all the available means and often with extreme violence, to share their ideals of peace and love throughout the world, but they didn't need to cut their knob off anymore.

Then, there are people with whom it’s not only difficult but also dangerous to talk. It’s the ones who believe that 600 years after this drastic change, God changed his mind for the last time. New place of revelation and new language to give the revised and final version of the last holly book. The instructions confided by an angel to a single and chosen man are quite clear: kill the Jews and the unbelievers unless they convert. It's more complex, of course. There's also stuff about the way women should dress, and how they should lower they eyes.
One day, this last prophet rode his horse through the sky. It’s not more difficult to believe than the sea being divided in two, or a semi-god walking on water, is it? Like the former group but unlike the first one, they annihilated many cultures and colonised numerous countries and like the first group, but unlike the second one, they do cut the end of their knob off.

I suppose it’s probably quite close in terms of difficulty then…

I don’t quite know what faith the French comedian Dieudonné* is singing about in his last video: “A new wind is blowing on the planet… It’s the wind of hope... A revolution inspired by stars of by god… A wind that opens the heart with light and faith… You can kill me and my family, you will not stop this wind... One cannot resist this strong wind of faith, one bends down or dies, you bunch of liars”
This is no joke, this is for real. Unfortunately the term wind in French does not refer to difficult digestion, but here again, I can assure you, it’s very difficult to talk. 1.300.000 views in 3 days on youtube. That’s what you call a hit I suppose, and you do not discuss a hit, do you?
But "Shoah-nanas", the apology of the final solution and a gesture that is not nazi but looks terribly like it is (ref web) ... It IS something else, isn’t it?
When will we (I mean me, people from the French art world) do something?

On the 6th and 7th of February, I will show, as part of the project «If we keep on talking the same language, we’ll tell the same story again» two paintings stating, "Muhammad, I love you". They were not made for this particular context, but maybe it works, I don't know....

* as I write this, the Guardian publishes that "Home Office warns border officials not to let controversial comic into UK to support Nicolas Anelka in 'quenelle' gesture hearing."