…Michael Golz has created a magical world called Athosland, he’s spent his life mapping out this utopian space and documenting the monsters creeping around inside it. Golz is an artist and an outsider who suffers from learning difficulties, he created Athosland as a child’s game but today it encompasses an ever-expanding universe, taking us to the edges of cognitive mapping and providing glimpses into his incredibly mind. work.
In the 1960s he started documenting Athosland as a child with the help of his brother Wolf and today his oeuvre includes maps, pictorial representations, linguistic inventions and a glossary of neologisms specific to Athosland. He has also produced a series of substantive guidebooks that set down the customs and habits of the creatures that inhabit Athosland.
More than an imaginary world, Athosland has become a life-long project that has grown over more than five decades into a comprehensive region, spreading out from the centre to encompass the surrounding sprawl of extended urbanization.
Beyond mapping, Golz has also developed a series of traditions and customs in Athosland. The inhabitants of Athosland live in an ideal world, they can pay using buttons – and when they run out of buttons they can use grass or leaves. There is a magic button to resuscitate the dead and robots allow the workers to take endless holiday leave. In Golz’s fantasy world locals lounge by the river next to vegetable patches where hamsters do the weeding. There is no need to wear clothes, everybody has long hair, urine tastes of apple juice and excrements of bratwurst.
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