“I write in English on purpose to have a distance to what I do and also to be able to quote song lyrics and things I hear in culture and often when I write I will kind of remember things that I picked up on (…). I put them into my writing and try to change or alter the meaning. I’m very interested in sort of double-meaning and misunderstood meanings.” (Bad Day Magazine) For WWTBD – What Would Thomas Bernhard Do, Swedish artist Karl Holmqvist will be reading from his book of poetry Cars Kill. He wrote it some time ago, laid it aside, and has published it only recently. What does physical mobility mean today when, thanks to the internet, we can be anywhere in the world in seconds? Or, is it not precisely because the body has been relieved by the instant trip through the ether, that the yearning for real place increases all the more? And has English not become a universal in virtual space; accentless, because all accents have become merging languages?
Karl Holmqvist (*1964) is an artist. He lives and works in Berlin. He has had exhibitions at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Bergen Kunsthall, and the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe. In 2011 he participated in the 54th Venice Biennale.