3:AM Magazine

By Benjamin Robinson.

Joshua Delaney is a most unlikely champion of the avant-garde. The product of a broken home, he rose through the ranks to become one of the world’s most successful financiers; but now he’s turning his back on commerce to pursue a career in the arts.

When I arrive at his lakeside retreat, the reclusive billionaire - dressed in khaki shorts, espadrilles, and a crumpled linen shirt - is out on the terrace, presiding over an enormous plate of cured meats and rustic bread.

Though his controversial appointment to the board of Brandish (the armaments manufacturer posted record gains last year) has done little to dampen his passion for conflict resolution, it’s Goethe’s Theory of Colours that is preoccupying him.

“He was the first to characterise colour as arising from the dynamic interplay of darkness and light,” he says, pulling a chair up for me. “His theory was widely adopted by artists of the time.”

He points along the lakeshore, sparkling in the sunlight, to Scaliger Castle. “Goethe sketched it when he visited the area. During his trip to Lake Garda, a sudden gust of wind forced the poet off course and he spent some time in Malcesine.” When asked about the vagaries of his own turbulent life - married three times, bankrupt twice - the financial guru turned patron-of-the-arts says ‘fortunate redirection’ has been his guiding light.

“About bloody time,” is his assessment of the current fashion for commissioning, taking the corporate world by storm. Blurring the lines between culture and enterprise, recent changes in attitude to Aid Policy has seen a spate of innovative projects spring up across the globe.

An accomplished pianist and author of several books on politics and economics, Delaney feels he has at last found alignment with his three great heroes: Beethoven (’the romantic reformer who toiled through the silence’), Thomas Jefferson (’the crusher of corporate aristocracies who saw blood as liberty’s manure’), and Adam Smith (’the pioneer of the labour of self-love’), and says he is attempting to span two opposing worlds. “I’m devoted to order, to market stability, on the one hand, but I’m also interested in new forms of expression, in breaking down barriers, expanding what it means to create.”

Relishing the controversy his latest project has attracted, he sees his role as agent provocateur as echoing Goethe’s Lake Garda adventure. “Did you know he was almost arrested? Some of Malcesine’s inhabitants took him for an Austrian spy. When you hear that,” he muses, “you think, literature, music, the arts, maybe they can contribute to the needs of our current situation, instigate the global about-face the planet is yearning for.”

Delaney’s visited many of the world’s war-torn regions and found they all have one thing in common: bitterness – ‘the acrimonious bedrock’, he calls it.

Which brings us to Gaza Pressé, his latest project. He jumps up like a schoolboy, when I broach the subject, opening his arms to the lake. “My God, when I saw Lena’s Vienna Rolls!” (Delaney’s collaborator on Gaza Pressé is Dutch artist, Lena Van Hoegowsh), “Those three Rolls-Royce Silver Shadows crushed into balls and lined up like an ellipsis outside OPEC’s headquarters in Vienna, I thought, she’d be perfect for Gaza.”

Is he worried that the apparent flippancy of such work undermines the seriousness of the current crisis? “Lena’s work amuses, for sure, but it ups the ante. It fronts onto the whole issue of consensual animosity.”

As with all Delaney’s exploits, hardnosed commerce underpins the adroit machinations. “One way out of our global malaise,” he says, “is to subvert both sides of the argument, you know, be it a lack of mercantile attrition on one side, or a laissez-faire brutality that sees injustice rebounding with alacrity on the other.”

His latest project, Gaza Pressé, consists of a squeezing chamber that will occupy a site in Palestine close to the Egyptian-Israeli border. “We’re hoping to place the work on the runway of Gaza International Airport,” he says, “we’re at a delicate stage in negotiations at the moment.” There’s been frantic “to-ing and fro-ing,” and “late night discussions with Hamas. But it’s a team effort,” he adds with characteristic self-effacement. Destroyed by Israeli military forces in 2001 and 2002, the inoperable airport will, Delaney hopes, see the controversial artwork in situ sometime next spring.

The chamber will be coated in solar-powered liquid crystal plasma, allowing live footage of the squeezing to be displayed on its exterior. The footage will also be broadcast, via the internet, to a worldwide audience. The chamber interior will house a static unicycle attached to a juice extractor “made,” Delaney says, injecting a note of gravitas into the proceedings, “from a highly durable, lightweight amalgam of Plexiglas and perspex of a type used in the cockpit canopies of military aircraft.”

A regular at the Verona Opera festival, Delaney explains that the artwork was inspired by the opening line of Liszt’s Mignon’s Song: ‘Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?’ (Do you know the land where the lemons bloom?).

“Hearing it again brought it all back” - his mother used to sing to him in her native German - “holidays in Paris, my first citron pressé on the Rue Saint Benoît.”

Delaney’s parents separated when he was six. When he would hear them fighting, the frightened youngster would lock himself in the toilet. Following the acrimonious divorce, he lived with his father - Irish poet, Seamus Delaney - who subjected him to drink-fuelled diatribes against capitalism.

Delaney plans to use the extracted juice to make a limited-edition lemonade, which he will auction with the proceeds going towards various relief programmes his holding company, Geo Tec, intends rolling out across the Middle East in 2011.

“The nature of the lemon is one of constriction,” he says, when asked if lemonade is right for the war-torn region. “It is the hybrid refugee of the citrus family. Harvesting it is an act of compassion. Squeezing it, an ending of oppression. As Lena says, we’re working in the still life tradition here, breaking new ground. While Art serves no purpose other that its own existence, once Gaza Pressé is up and running, I’ve no doubt the message that relief is at hand, that refreshment is on its way, will filter out into the wider community.”

So who does he see as using the juicer? “I’m confident the inhabitants of the Strip will flock to the inoperable runway, seeing in the artwork a chance to help others as unfortunate as themselves. We’ll be issuing invitations to various movers and squeezers, of course,” he adds, tearing a piece of ciabatta, “Government Officials, heads of NGO’s, local religious and political leaders.”

He’s keen to discuss the mechanics of the chamber, which will operate along the lines of a public amenity, with a single occupancy capacity. “It was Lena who suggested we use a modesty lock on the door, as if it were a public toilet.” As a counterpoint to the animated exterior, the interior of the chamber will exude an intimate Gaza scent (’citrus fruits laced with sulphur’), which the urbane billionaire hopes to market as an outré perfume, the proceeds to be funnelled into sanitation schemes in the West Bank.

Delaney’s co-conspirator on Gaza Pressé, Lena Van Hoegowsh says of the scent: “It is the aroma of war and the ending of war: voluptuous, voracious and bitter.” No stranger to controversy, the Dutch artist has instigated numerous interventions in her time. Following the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, she stitched strips of streaky bacon into a burqa and put it on Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid. She was apprehended, blowtorch in hand, amid a cloud of burning flesh, and received a hefty fine for her efforts. Deepening her act of insurgency, Van Hoegowsh donated Bacon Burqa (a work that single-handedly rescued Arte Povera from the wilderness of didacticism) to the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid - fittingly, once the San Carlos Hospital - where it is preserved in cold storage for posterity.

With both sides entrenched, how does Delaney intend rallying the Diaspora? “Marketing is key here,” he says, furrowing his brow. Using a top-down approach a host of international stars have been drafted in to design the labels, each of which will be a “handcrafted work of art” reflecting the challenge of “peace through productivity,” and “reconciliation through evolution.”

There’ve been rumours of friction between Van Hoegowsh and the unorthodox financier, which Delaney is anxious to scotch. “There was some debate as to whether the modesty lock should say ‘engaged’ or ‘occupied’. For me, occupation gave a degree of dignity to the work, I thought it a fitting epitaph for the chamber, while Lena felt the function of the structure was more a regenerative act of engagement. By way of circumventing any untoward ramifications, we decided on the neologism, engagupied. A further dispute arose in terms of materials, Lena favouring a revolving ceramic disc made of Syrian clay, while my preference was for a sliding metal plate recouped lex talionis from a Uzi submachine gun.”

Gaza’s thriving market in citrus fruits declined as a result of Israeli restrictions, and so I ask Delaney where the lemons will be sourced. “They’’ll be harvested from my groves here in Lake Garda,” the philanthropist says, pointing to the sun-drenched slopes high above us. “This is very much a hands-on project for me, picking the fruit, shipping it to Gaza in time for the opening.”

Delaney’s most ambitious project to date Gaza Pressé will see unprecedented levels of co-operation between the disparate strands of his empire. “The lemons,” he says, proudly, “will be harvested in Italy, squeezed in Palestine, bottled in India and shipped to London the following spring for auction.” What about the environmental impact, I interject. “All aspects of the extraction will be done by hand. Prior to mounting the unicycle, the occupier will load their allotted lemons into a Gaza-shaped squeezing chamber, which will be mounted cistern-like above their heads. Each participant will be limited to a maximum of thirty lemons, and with an average static cycling speed of twenty-five kilometres per hour, a standard fifteen minute session completes 6.25 kilometres, Gaza’s runway being 3.08 kilometres in length, the simulated round trip yielding approximately one litre of juice per occupancy.”

And shipment to and from Gaza? “To be done exclusively by wind-powder.” The gifted yachtsman intends taking the helm of one of the World Cruisers himself, and may add a competitive edge to the logistics. “We’ve currently testing the water regarding sponsorship,” he confides.

Keen to point out his appointment to the board of Brandish is solely in an advisory capacity, he says he’s happy to confirm that a recently acquired subsidiary of Brandish, Bit Bat Bop - the security firm founded by rap artists, Ali BaBa and Sunni-D - will, in conjunction with local law enforcement agencies, be responsible for the security arrangements. Delaney quotes from the publicity material for Gaza Pressé: “The circus of violence finds its way home. Gaza Pressé will, within that circus, voice the sovereignty of peace and the democracy of hope reclaimed from within.”

Following its time in Palestine, Delaney hopes to tour the squeezing chamber round the globe, so that “innocent victims of violence everywhere can avail of its restorative properties.”

As the owner of two Champagne Houses and a number of Bordeaux properties, (including Château Foutaises in Lalande de Pomerol), I ask if he hopes the price the war-torn elixir achieves will exceed that of the vintage Champagne his current partner, Mimi De Fayne, reportedly bathes in?

He pushes a bowl of olives into the centre of the table. “This is where human rights start to finance themselves.”

Describing himself as ‘a realpolitik Artist’ he says he intends drawing upon the resources of an investment community “thirsting for an opportunity to savour the fruits of conflict resolution while luxuriating in a reduction in global poverty.”

As the sun climbs higher, he leaves the shady terrace and disappears into his villa. When he returns I ask him about a recent Ethical Avarice article that described his artistic escapades as, ‘a thumb-twiddling exercise for the pathologically well-heeled.’

“Er kann mich im Arsche lecken!” he quips, brandishing a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem.

I put it to him that Gaza Pressé might be seen as a rich man’s folly, an exercise in cultural appropriation.

He pours me a generous glass of Sauternes. “There’s a tendency on both sides to think negatively, to dismiss things out of hand, but we’re trying to answer the question: how do you stop the madness? Perhaps,” he adds, pondering his own dissonant lineage, “it is the acerbic wit of the Irish and my Germanic sense of order that has me in debt to paradise.”

I press him as to why he’s not sourcing lemons locally.

He nods before answering. “For UN water to be turned into global lemonade, the base product must be neutral.”

Which brings us to the issue of water, long a source of antagonism in the region. “Remember Goethe and colour?” he says, lifting his glass to the light. I ask him to elaborate and his thoughts turn to Gaza again. “There are evolutionary considerations to be taken into account,” he says darkly. Within the scientific paradigm, Goethe’s ideas set the stage for Darwin and Wallace, and I wonder if this is what Delaney and Van Hoegowsh are doing: setting the stage for a revolution in commerce. “Environmental degradation is exacerbating the situation,” he adds with a weary shrug.

As the day draws on the honeyed tones of d’Yquem, once the property of that reviled crusader and practitioner of courtly love, Eleanor of Aquitaine, envelop us in its beauty.

Delaney is distracted now, toying with an olive pip.

Gazing up at his groves, he flicks the stony kernel into the vast unyielding sunlight.

Is he tired of the questions, of always having to explain?

“Wealth,” he muses, “brings its own conflicts, its own irreconcilable differences. Did you know,” he adds, running his finger around the rim of his glass, “that Jefferson was so taken with this wine, he ordered several hundred bottles of the 1784? What would he make, I wonder, of a glass of Gaza Pressé?”

The wineglass begins to sing, piercing the air with a screech.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Benjamin Robinson is a writer and visual artist. He was born in Northern Ireland in 1964. His essays and short stories have recently appeared in Recirca, Existere, 10,000 Tons of Black Ink, Crannóg, Dandelion and are forthcoming in ART From ART – An Anthology of Fiction Inspired by Art [Modernist Press], and A cappella Zoo. His art has been exhibited in Ireland, Germany and the UK. He lives in Dublin with his wife and young son.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Friday, September 3rd, 2010.