Today, “Paradise” is an area of around 5,000 m2 in Vorderberg in the Gailtal valley in Carinthia, the birthplace of Cornelius Kolig, where buildings and garden elements for the objects and installations have been created since 1979. The oldest part and core of the “Paradise” is the “Red Pit” (6 x 10 m in size, 3 m deep) in the center of the complex, concreted in the open field in 1979 for the use of the “Skull Crusher”. From here, the facility developed radially outwards. In 1983, the “Red Pit” was encased by the long “sow and cow sheds” at the sides. The “Refugium” and the wall to the south then closed the atrium and formed the “large inner courtyard” with the “Lilienfeld”. The next construction phase in 1984 was the two apsidal elements to the south and north, “Weingarten” and “Pantheon” with the “Gipserei” and “Kotstreckerei”, with the “Schiff” in between in the “Vorhof”.
“The driving force behind the realization of the “Paradise” was the conviction that a higher degree of complexity and intensity can be achieved through the interaction, the synopsis and the symphonic harmony of many interrelated works than is possible through the portioning of artistic concepts into individual works that are generally preferred by the art world. Thus, over the course of several decades, very different elements such as workshops, display warehouses, cemeteries, archives, courtyards, gardens and objects, pictures, sculptures, audio images, drawings, nature and body stagings have developed into a life and total work of art that is inseparably linked to the location.
The content of the “Paradise” project is the exposure and intensification of the sensual and thus communicable aspects of life, its beauty and its horrors, of lust and disgust, of love, violence, illness, suffering, death, intoxicated existential tenseness, metabolism, colors, stench, fragrances, touch, the pleasures of tasting and hearing, in new combinatorial connections and mergers of their meanings in multimedia installations that can be experienced with all the senses. Paradise” is amoral, it does not value . . . ”
from: Cornelius Kolig, Paradise. The instruction manual.
Klagenfurt, Vienna: Ritter Verlag, 2013