Dr. Eva Barbara Holzer, physicist at an internationally prestigious research center in Geneva

… The exhibition has the title “Philosophical Contemplations”.

My Greek teacher told us about the concept of “panhistor” at school. This is Greek, “pan” means “all” and “histor” means “scholar”. A panhistor therefore was someone who mastered all the sciences known at that time.

Today, scientists increasingly have to specialize, that is, we know more and more about an ever narrower branch. My own field is physics, which is full of insights that even we physicists find very strange. Models such as quantum mechanics or relativity theory are first at all merely systems of equations that describe our measurable reality extremely well. What these equations exactly mean is still partly discussed. We have come full circle and are back in philosophy, in the field from which physics once emerged in ancient Greece.

Why am I telling this? Well, Juliane is not a panhistor, which is no longer possible to be today, but – unlike me – she apparently has not been content to do research merely in a few fields. We have had very long and profound discussions over the last 10+ years. Juliane has astonished me again and again with all the subjects she deals with. From developmental psychology and sociology to subjects from modern physics to metaphysics. One of our last conversations dealt with the question of whether our minds could exist independently of our bodies in this world.

The subject of the exhibition gets to the heart. What we see in her paintings are philosophical contemplations that are closely linked to real life. It is about us and the society in which we live. What effect, what influence do we have on others?

In the cycle “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity” we see graphic interpretations of the extremely challenging formulas of the general theory of relativity by Albert Einstein. Juliane’s visualization expresses that every mass changes space (and time), is bending it. The shortest path between two points follows the illustrated lines and we see that they are not straight lines. Gravitation, as we know it, is a consequence of this curvature of space. If we apply this to our lives, we can ask ourselves: What mass do I have as a human being? What force do I exert on others? How do I change space and time around me? How do individuals interact in a society? Complement each other to a harmonious unity? Or repel each other, ostracize each other? An anti-gravity, so to speak. According to what laws does a society work?

Juliane has experienced and suffered very different social systems in her life. Growing up as a child in Dresden in the GDR, she was able to develop her manifold artistic talents. She has received extensive education in dance, music and visual arts. When Juliane was a teenager, her family was dealing with the very ugly face of this dictatorship. When they finally managed to leave the country after three years, her family moved to Switzerland shortly thereafter. From the dark excesses of a dictatorship, she came to a very advanced democracy. Juliane writes: “I have been living in a dictatorial and a democratic state, in a developing and in a developed country, in various cultures with different norms and values.”

Today, in Europe and around the world, we encounter a clash of cultures with considerable potential for conflict: in the “West” the broadly advanced stage of individualism with all its wonderful achievements and also its obvious disadvantages and sad excesses. And in many other parts of the world, societies that consider a person above all as part of her/his social group, her/his family. In quite a number of regions, the expulsion from the social group is still synonymous with the social or even real death. How is a constructive and peaceful coexistence of such different cultures possible?

Juliane is not just a philosopher, she is a woman of action. Both in her work and in her free time, she has repeatedly driven projects and accepted responsibility.

08th March, 2019