Zilkens' News Blog

Zilkens' News Blog 8 2022

Dear friends of Kobel's Art Week,

ARCO Madrid is taking place and there is also an art fair in South Africa (Cape town art fair) now in its 4th year. The further away from the hotspot of Eastern Europe, one gets the feeling, the better. In Ukraine, however, curators tirelessly prepare art exhibitions and find lenders who don't demand war insurance with shaking knees, which no insurer will issue any more anyway. A Propos: The insurance industry is riddled with risk-averse people of all genders. After all, dealing with the risks of others is part of the business model, one would think. However, they are refusing to transfer risks from old energy sources just as much as they are refusing to cover Ukrainian airlines for a war risk that is being trumpeted and trumpeted by many sensationalists rather than being combated intelligently through diplomatic action.

Now a few things have finally come to an end: the Olympic Games in the Chinese Empire (let's see if the artificially snow-covered mountains change the microclimate) and the Security Conference in Munich - problematic anyway without dialogue partners from the crisis-hit areas. But, as Gregeor Steingart likes to quote Hannah Arendt, truth only comes in twos - and in Munich everyone only talked to themselves. It is astonishing how the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which had installed a space station called Peace (MIR), in its size reduced to that of Russia, sounds tones and strategies that were only known from GRÖFAZ (the greatest leader of all times). One looks in bewilderment at the Ukrainian border areas and sees clearly how Donetsk is to be turned into the station Gleiwitz, which, as is well known, served Adolf Hitler as a pretext for the attack on Poland in 1939 and thus for the outbreak of the Second World War. That war cost millions of lives and Putin seems to want to forget that his people still know how bloody the parallel invasion of Poland by the Soviet armies ultimately ended for the Russians as well. In antiquity, old age was associated with wisdom and highly honoured - today, nolens volens, medicine supports a mania for immortality and the over-65s of all sexes still have something to prove to themselves and their peoples. (Whether Biden, Putin, Erdogan, Xi Jinping, Lukashenko) In connection with art and culture, they are completely inconspicuous, except as patrons of nice-sounding major exhibitions like "Diversity United". But as is to be feared, the national does not strive for unification, but for Ursurpation. - All that remains is to hope that Vladimir does not want to be sung as Adolf Putin in the future, he should be more intelligent to protect the security interests of his sphere of influence.

NFT - no we won't say what it is now just because it pretends to contribute to the democratisation of art - seems to be fiscally problematic after all. In England, a couple of figures have now fallen into the clutches of justice because they are suspected of having embezzled 1.4 million pounds in VAT. Presumably one of the servers was on Commonwealth territory.

From Thursday, the strongholds of Carnival sink behind masks in the street carnival. It's called Weiberfastnacht and has long been proof that roles are being questioned. Perhaps less dogmatically than is usual today but all the more effective.

I wish you an optimistic start to the week

Your Stephan Zilkens and the team of Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH in Solothurn and Cologne