We listened to the radio, we read the newspapers, we closely followed the coherence and disorder of the responses to the crisis. In the reigning confusion, could we have felt any better informed? But we were sometimes confronted with impatient requests for the world to go back to how it was before, to this normality which we viewed as more and more blinkered and fake. It had taken great effort to reach our status as castaways and we had hardly considered the impact: Did we want to, once again, rob ourselves of what this had taught us to recognise? We welcomed our visitors, we exchanged the words of castaways and, above all, we held together everything that they were showing us of our islands and huts. We knew that we were privileged, part of a select few “cultural institutions,” - museums had been authorised to reopen their doors! - but we did not want to use this privilege to fly the flag of an identical world to "before," where culture was often so sadly reduced to the state of a consumer product, a commodity, a source of entertainment, a pantomime, leaving us, despite appearances, orphans of an authentic shared experience. 

On our island, as disciples of the works we house, sharing the words of castaways, lost but alive in the immense archipelago of loneliness, we feel, more than ever, connected and responsible, both enthusiastic and worried. We are experiencing the concept of being "situated," in the sense that we have defined the notion of situated arts, but now with such increased necessity and density! We are being carried away by the places where we are confined, which show us the extent of our boundaries, i.e. both the limitations and distance, being anchored down and taking flight, even the idea that we are showing artistic expression: the movement of an arrow and its unspecified target; our principle of existence: both “being there” and being propelled “out of ourselves.”

Sincerely yours,

Carl Havelange