This month, my website ‘The World of Cosey’ celebrates its 20th birthday! In september 2002, I had some vacation days left when I changed jobs. I decided to spend the time realising an idea I had for some time: a web site dedicated to the works of Cosey. I suspected that Cosey himself wouldn’t start an adventure in the virtual universe (I was right about that), and I felt he deserved a presence on the worldwide web.
And that was how it started…
Over the years, many Cosey fans have sent me messages, e-mails, chats but also ‘real post’: news about Cosey, posters or publications that were missing from the ‘Other Works’ section of my site, wine labels, lottery tickets (no prizes won), links to interviews on tv, radio or newspapers, etc. With some of them, I have had wonderful conversations by mail about many aspects of Cosey’s work. I want to mention and thank some of them here – my apologies to anyone else who has mailed me – Bernard Matthey-Doret, Dinu Logoz, Philippe Regottaz, Ralph Doumit, Jean Christophe Defline and Thomas Geertz. Thank you all!
It has been an incredible experience to receive messages about Cosey from parts of the world where it must be very hard to get your hands on albums by Cosey. I wonder if these fans can actually read the albums – as far as I know there are very few english translations, let alone Bengali or Japanese. It must be these formidable drawings of Cosey that speak to everyone.
The amount of visitors to ‘The World of Cosey’ is astounding, I find. I have sound statistics on my site since 2016 and since then, my site was visited almost 90 thousand times. In years with a new album (like 2021), I have on average 52 visits every day, in years without new albums (like 2020 or this year), still 33 visits are made to my site every day, on average. Highest daily scores were reached in January and February 2017, when Cosey received the Grand Prix in Angoulême.
“Incroyable Roger Klaassen, fidèle avec son World of Cosey, malgré les années et ma participation quasi inexistante!
D’autant plus impressionnant qu’il réalise lui-même de très belles aquarelles de voyage.”
Bernard Cosey, september 2022
Finally… Cosey himself. Very soon after publication of ‘The World of Cosey’, he contacted me about my site. He was very kind and positive about it, and he immediately authorised any use of his artworks on the website. Although Cosey writes about a ‘participation quasi inexistant’, we cooperated in making ‘virtual expositions’ and interviews in the weeks up to publications of albums, from 2008 onwards. I have learned that I must never ask him if he is working on a new project – everything is secret until the publisher announces a new album.
I met Cosey only once, in Angoulême in 2018. We walked from his hotel to the exposition ‘Une quête de l’épure’ and talked about the expo and about Calypso, which had been published a few months before… but Cosey preferred to talk about my water colour drawings, as he does in the text he wrote to celebrate this 20th birthday of ‘The World of Cosey’.
Modest about his own phenomenal achievements, generous towards others, that is typical of Cosey. I hope I can maintain this website for many years to come and – although I grant Cosey all the free time and rest he wants – that I can add many novelties to the site.
Thanks to all contributors, to Cosey and to all visitors!
If you want to see my water colour drawings, please visit the Sketchbook-page of my website.
