When we are artists, researchers, or writers, we choose what we do with our time, who we talk to. Of course we have commitments, but the amount of freedom we have with what to do or what to research is humongous compared to others.

I see lies everywhere - switch on the television, it's lies. Everything is lies. In the art world or science community, we are intellectuals, people who research, who are interested in learning and thinking. I think the level of lies is way lower than when you step into what I call "the outside world".

When you grow up, some areas of the world are out of your knowledge - especially when I grew up, in the '70s and '80s. Now, you have access to everything, but back then you did not because of the way the media was, and society imposed more directions, structures, and restrictions. It's not like art was prohibited, but art was not something that the people around me presented. So I developed it very much on my own growing up.

Unless you are in a survival situation, if you allow yourself to be creative, to be thinking, to be developing, there will be outbursts. You can say, almost beauteously, when you have less time for art, you have to select your best practice.

I learned how the brain is the softest organ we have - how soft the brain literally is and also how easily it can be manipulated. I think I will survive the whole thing, but there are lots of coincidences. For example, somehow I might have been trained to sustain stress through my life and through my art.

When we are artists, researchers, or writers, we choose what we do with our time, who we talk to. Of course we have commitments, but the amount of freedom we have with what to do or what to research is humongous compared to others.