Conversation with Bruno Corà (excerpt). From the catalogue for the exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art of the City of Paris, 1980.
B.C.: Why do you think it is important today to reread the past?
J.K.: My past, to start with, is different from somebody else’s past. On this continent, due to the flow of information or to the real communication that existed, my past belongs to someone else and that person’s past belongs to me. Since we all share the same past, this common platform that formulates the tendencies of our reasoning, we can choose a recent or a very distant past depending on our needs. The future has never existed as “futuristic”; the future always contains the melancholy of the past, and there one finds the greatness of gradation. And without this, an artwork like the Bernini’s obelisk with the small elephant could never have been created.