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Blog by the artist Sanne Kabalt

Questions with no answers

A short scene from Michael Haneke’s Das Weisse Band that I can’t seem to forget.

I was reminded of this poignant conversation when leaving through Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and reading this; 

'Indeed, the only true serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that can not be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.'

In this scene a child asks some fundamental questions and yet a clear answer is given to each and every one of them. The question with no answer is not asked, but it is there. It is in the way his eyes widen, in the urgency of all the other questions. The question with no answer is: why?