KARLSRUHE.- In the age of the return from the religious war, an intercultural dialog is required. With a bold exhibition project, the ZKM therefore wants to refer to a European tradition, from Llull to Leibniz, which placed rationale at the service of religion, reason at the service of belief, and not the reverse, religion at the service of irrationality: DIA-LOGOS. Ramon Llull and the art of combination( 3/17/2018 to 8/5/2018). The Catalan philosopher, theologian, logician and mystic from Mallorca, Ramon Llull (around 1232– 1316) formalized the religion concepts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in a type of theological comparison, to give religious truth validity. From this formalization of terms, arose the logical school of ars combinatoria, which is still visible in the current artistic present. By combining outstanding historical materials from the archives of important libraries, like the Bavarian State Library and the Biblioteca de Catalunya, with contemporary artistic items, the exhibition allows insights into previously unknown facets of Ramon Llull's thinking and actions.

With rotatable panels, on which a multitude of terms were arranged in the shape of a cross, formal-logical correspondences could be derived between these terms. Llull's “paper computers” were the first attempts to interlace truth and provability, logic and faith as an antidote to religious fanaticism and fundamentalism. Llull's method of acquiring knowledge and world construction, his universal concepts and intercultural ideas are still effective today, in literature, visual art, music and philosophy, as well as information theory and media technology, right up to the latest generative and algorithmic principles. This exhibition is an Aide-mémoire against the global repression of history. Llull's main work Ars generalis ultima and/or Ars brevis (1308) is shown for the first time in three languages - Arabic, Hebrew and Latin, as an early testament to an intercultural dialog, which is more necessary than ever today. In order to disseminate his new knowledge, Llull wrote over 250 books in Catalan, Latin and Arabic, traveled between Western Europe, North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean,and spoke in front of kings and popes. According to legend, he died for his convictions. Llull is one of the great founding fathers and most enlightened spirits in European culture, who was committed to the trio of humanism, renaissance and enlightenment. Europe’s copyright on modernity and innovation, is also based on the work of Ramon Llull.

The focus of the exhibition
The content of the exhibition develops around two focuses: On the one hand, Llull’s ideas reveal media archaeological and philosophical aspects, which make his work indispensable as a basis for today's discourse with media ecologies and learning algorithms. On the other hand, his universal, rational system of knowledge, opens up a highly relevant attitude today, which is realized as a dialog beyond the cultures and boundaries of the three monotheistic religions, in a productive analysis with the others.

Historical documents ...
The exhibition exposes surprising and unknown aspects of Llull’s thinking, in that historical documents enter into a broad and multi-layered dialog with artistic items from the 20th and 21st centuries, which are inspired by Llull’s ars combinatoria. Manuscripts from the 14th century in Latin, Hebrew and Arabic, demonstrate the sociocultural and political relationships of their time. The centerpiece of this historiographic piece, is the Breviculum ex artibus Raimundi Lulli electum, which represents the life of the Spanish philosopher in suggestive miniatures. An animated, immersive projection of beautiful miniatures, leads the visitors to the exhibition into this long past, foreign world, and shows that the reception of Llull’s body of thought found a great resonance, particularly in Germany - widespread in the 16th and 17th century as the school of thought of Lullism. The humanist Nikolaus Cusanus (1401–1464) and the universal scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) analyzed Llull’s work in great deal. For Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), one of the most important founders of mathematical logic, whose way of thinking and conception of apparatus such as the mechanical calculator, revolutionized the fields of philosophy and technology, Llull’s writings were an important inspiration. In the exhibition, you can see a functional reproduction of his calculator, which he developed in 1672 and which was able to carry out the four basic arithmetic operations automatically, for the first time, as well as the original calculator by Philipp Matthäus Hahn (1739–1790) from Württemberg, a trinket from the State Museum of Württemberg.

... in dialog with contemporary items
In the exhibition, numerous protagonists of art across all disciplines, are a testament to the enormous topicality and relevance of Llull even today. The ideas of Ramon Llull had a great influence on the work of visual artists such as Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), Jorge Oteiza (1908–2003), Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) and Anselm Kiefer (*1945). These artists primarily searched for hidden sources of knowledge in Llull's work, which are formed as alchemy or mysticism. The light rooms by Otto Piene (1928–2014) reveal, similarly to Llull, an experience of cosmic connection, inspiration and contemplation. This is based on the idea of peaceful human coexistence, which Piene set as a counterpoint to the terrible experiences of the Second World War. The artist and architect Daniel Libeskind was familiar with the writings of Ramon Llull and Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), when he designed a Virtual House in 1997. The concept of virtuality relates to the idea of the possible here, and therefore makes a combinatory, open principle inspired by Llull, the structural basis of his design.

In the area of literature, the permutation techniques by Juan Eduardo Cirlot (1916–1973) form an extreme case of combinatory poetry. But also authors such as Italo Calvino (1923–1985), Umberto Eco (1932–2016) right up to the Latin Americans Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) and Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) show that they were influenced by Llull’s ars combinatoria, as well as authors in the Vienna group, but especially Konrad Bayer with his text der vogel singt – eine dichtungsmaschine in 571 bestandteilgen [...], [The bird sings - a poetry machine in 571 parts] which is based on a complicated mathematical construction plan. Ramon Llull has also left his mark on music - in the works of Arnold Schönberg (1874– 1951), John Cage (1912–1992) or Josep Maria Mestres Quaderny (*1929) amongst others.

Artists such as José María Yutrralde (*1942), Manuel Barbadillo (1929–2003) and Manfred Mohr (*1938) offer voyages of discovery into the kingdom of the early media art of the 1960s and 1970s, which are centrally supplemented by contemporary items by young media artists such as Ralf Baecker (*1977), Philipp Goldbach (*1978) and Yunchul Kim (*1970). In dialog with the Llull way of thinking, they offer current and deep insights into epistemological questions, which relate to our media environment. In addition, there are new productions from artists such as David Link (*1971), Perejaume (*1957) and Adam Slowik (*1980), for the exhibition, which deal directly with Llull’s ideas, and transpose them into today’s social topicality. These works operating on the basis of immersion and interaction, should open up approaches to Llull in a special way, and give the visitors a new understanding of their own ways of thinking and perception.