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I do as Im told.
I never will go, come back here, because its so horrible.
This is decoration, I cannot have it, you know?
I hate the writing on the coffee that they put there and all the flowers and all the nonsense.
Im overwhelmed by music, by poetry, and if Im no more overwhelmed, I die.
You know what I mean?
Its important to be overwhelmed.
His German deadpan humor is tuned black and bleak, but, realizing that, hes also impish.
Many people were outraged by it.
Germans are afraid of taboos, he says.
But it was a kind of joke, I venture.
It was funny, yeah, he agrees, then adds: I was in some ways naive.
Kiefer said, turning to her.
People think Im a monster, you know?
But hes both serious and sees the bleak humor in everything.
Its desperate in the world.
So you have to be funny, you know?
Otherwise, you cannot live.
Tourists gather, smartphones raised in awed obedience to its Great Somethingness.
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Okay, so what might it be trying to tell us?
The lead its made of references alchemy.
So thats one allusion, he allows.
But you know the exodus.
The snake is everywhere a big, important symbol, he says.
I ask him whats up with the books on the ground.
Jesus says to the disciples,Youre all vocated.
But only a few are chosen.And this is the chosen book?Yeah.
The piece has been eight years in the making.
He really fell in love with one of the piers on the Hudson, Baume told me.
But then Hurricane Sandy finished it off, so it couldnt be the site of a sculpture.
Why we didnt do this, I forget.
It was too complicated, I think.
How would you be able to find it?
This was not my problem, I dont know why it didnt work.
It was something about permission, you know?
You need the threshold to go to it.
He went on: When I was a kid.
I lived in a little village without a radio, television, nothing.
I always drew skyscrapers when I was 5, 6 years old.
Why didnt you become an architect then, I ask.
An architect can never do what he wants, no?
What I dont want at all [is] to convince someone.
Maybe they can make it permanent, suggests Vousden.
But Kiefer is looking forward to its return to Barjac.
And then I will build, later, the skyscrapers around it, he says, and laughs.
