INTERVIEW with Roland Kaiser
Carmela Loiacono talks with Roland Kaiser who takes part in the International Art Exhibition NATURAL FLOW – Exploring water’s essence in Matera, at cultural hypogeum Lega Navale Italiana Matera-Magna Grecia.

Carmela Loiacono – Please introduce yourself and talk about the selected video art work “offTheWaters-THE.GREAT.FLOOD” you presented during the exhibition NATURAL FLOW – Exploring water’s essence. 
Roland Kaiser – I am Roland Kaiser, born on the 9th of May in 1962 in Pulheim, Cologne- area, Germany. I am a self- taught artist from Germany. I always found so much interest and joy in creating art, even as a little boy. Especially since some crucial times in hospital in my early youth at the beginning of the 70s decade I felt the need expressing myself via drawing and painting and developed it further. I had a very critical objective and distant attitude on my own works, 1st being supported, but as I grew older I got more and more criticized for wanting to become an artist and this fight against conventional thinking of my environment 1st demotivated and then strongly was my drive to make it better and show “them” that I am still trying and won’t give in being an artist. In the long run I won and am now thankful for both of it: the critics and the motivation to do better!
In 1979 I moved to Cologne – the ‘big’ city -. Exhibitions in the 90th followed, also did my 1st.Internet- exhibition “Basics,“ in the year 1997.
In 1990 I invented the Recycling-Art-Concept, which basically is founded on the principle to use only used – even in digital form! – and found material for creating art and developing it to a better self – looking and feeling brand new. This can be seen also to with respect to the conditions in our human form: accepting the SCARs we’ve got to become healed and made whole again and reach out for a new and better life. The idea was and still is to create sustainable Art and at the same time saving resources due to the responsibility modern man has with regards to material and nature; long before this was discovered by politics and industry. In order to be authentic and also to show aspects of sustainability, my works show visible traces of an engagement with my vision of the finished work, my own life and the mostly used material that I process and that seems new and fresh at the same time, as it were reborn, and that being even and especially true for digital art, which I started producing in the 1980 as well.
Dr. Erich Franz for example, former deputy artistic director of the Westphalian State Museum for Art and Cultural History in Münster, Germany wrote about my artworks in 1996 and said, that he liked them and stated that they are [….] put together carefully and do so also in leading to different moments of stability and movement. Also the clashes of colors are not without a silent form of energy. Smooth and cautious seem to be indeed most of my art- works, always characterized by helping things to develop and flourish. An effect that the viewer of my works can also notice in himself, feeling the shown enthusiasm and love for life. Then the miracle happens and a portal is opened to a harmonic, brighter and better world. I am achieving this results, I call them miracles, by being surrounded most of my time daily by my art, my studio is also my home, I collect materials as I am still obliged to my RAC (see above) from 1990, which applies also for my digital art. Sometimes it took a piece decades to be in the final form. Being confronted with all my art- pieces and files and own unique documentation style and praying a lot I get the revelation and help from above to get things done and get better and more effective. I just want to create and please God making it right?
Last year I started ma RAC_ART- Database project, documenting everything and that means literally every piece I ever created online on a secret site buried somewhere around my website https://aarontec.de/. It’s a very neat and smoothly operating CMS I developed myself as I am not only and selftaught artist but also a selftaught programmer. This site is for selected customers and curators or art- dealers which show interest in exploring my “multiverse” of creations? 
My video art work “offTheWaters-THE.GREAT.FLOOD” exhibited during the exhibition NATURAL FLOW – Exploring water’s essence for example is also a very good example for recycling digital art within my RAC – concept from 1990: the waves, which are in the center of the beholders attention I created in the late summer of 1998. Now they are the fundamental part of a video, which would have been technically impossible to create back in 1998.
As I also produce music, it was possible to give it the perfect “it- vintage- style” with the tools I now can use, when Carmela invited me to participate during her exhibition in Matera, Italy. The theme added exactly the part which was missing to animate those digital waves from 1998 waves and giving them a stage and a soundtrack also.
As an RAC- concept artist the ART_ViDEO “offTheWaters-THE.GREAT.FLOOD” is about not only the sparse use of water to save resources but has also a very spiritual dimension: as I use water in my everyday- life, I wonder how God is moving them (the waters)?Sometimes it is just very smooth and clam, maybe a tiny dripping only or just lying on the grass at morning… but then, the other day, it may be as well very disruptive and loud even dangerous, jumping right out of its bounds changing whole landscapes and wash everything in its way, so you better stay out! People often wonder what God is like or what he does. And waters can give answers in its behavior and ways. God uses not only the still and small voice to talk to us but sometimes he uses nature and its power also to speak. At the end of that video, there is a question put on the screen: “So what happens next?” as God has promised to never again send SUCH a flood. As we anticipate the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ the answer will be visible soon. And that is something which drives and motivates me, getting better and getting ready. 

Carmela Loiacono – How would you describe your creative process? What or who influenced or is influencing your work?
Roland Kaiser – It works out like that, describing my creative process: collecting materials, pondering, praying, getting guidance and support from God, looking after the pieces or data or documentations over and over, praying again and then standing up, going to do the creation or the art- piece.
I am influenced by the news, scripture studies, prayers, my experiences in life, my past, other artists, for example: Helmut Federle, whom I met personally in November 1995, giving me valuable advice for my art, Roy Lichtenstein, as I still “melt” the comic- and the abstract- approach in my “art- laboratory”, curators, critics and my wife who really saved a lot of my pieces when I was close to shutting down my creative efforts when the negative phases came.

Carmela Loiacono – What do you think about shared art on social media? Could it be an alternative way of communicating contemporary art?
Roland Kaiser – Shared art on social media? Well, if the copyright is respected, yes. Often exhibitions are done online nowadays, also because of the hard lockdowns we had, especially in Germany. Its surely is an alternative way of communicating contemporary art, so done with a sense of proportion and in a targeted manner, yes, of course!

Carmela Loiacono – What are your future goals and/or projects?
Roland Kaiser – a) Some of my future goals are to get a wider reach (USA I started successful in April this year with the award I got there), b) exploring new ways expressing myself without leaving my lifelong “SCARs”- theme, cause they are what brought me where I am now, c) honoring my priesthood, becoming a more Christ- like and better person, exploring more of God’s secrets. D) Concrete projects are my RAC-ART- Database, as I want to complete the project soon, I will then e) use my customers- and curators-/ gallerists- database to contact potentially interested art- lovers and invite them to visit that virtual space also. My concrete efforts with regards to creating more pieces now will f) definitely be the “Jesus Christ healed my SCARs …” – series which I have just begun!