Reykjavík Grapevine - 28.09.2013, Blaðsíða 22

22
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 2011
Art | Inspired by a glacier
Imagine if you had to hike across the Alps with a heavily stuffed backpack. Now imag-
ine you had to climb steep cliffs along the way, still carrying your equipment. Finally,
imagine taking a large red boat weighing approximately 200 kilograms with you.
Sound crazy? Yes, of course it does!
But this is precisely what the German
artists Thomas Huber and Wolfgang
Aichner did for their exhibition “pas-
sage2011,” which includes the boat
itself, a short film and several photos
shot during the performance, and is
currently on display at the National
Gallery of Iceland.
When it comes to viewing art, we
are often looking for meaning, and like
most artworks, “passage2011” offers a
lot of room for interpretation. With the
continued melting of glaciers due to cli-
mate change, one might be inclined to
see the boat as a metaphor for the huge
meltdown, for the heavy burden we
all have to carry, but that is of course
just one possible interpretation. “We
know people are always trying to read
between the lines,” Wolfgang Aichner
says, “and it can be seen as some kind
of protest for environmental matters,
but this is not how we thought about it
at first.”
Born on a windy glacier in
Iceland
Actually, the origins of their project
can be traced back to Iceland, twenty-
five years ago when the two German
friends were hiking Vatnajökull for the
first time. On one hand, the trip ended
in a total catastrophe: they found them-
selves trapped on the windy glacier. On
the other hand, it was a success: this
was the moment that their art connect-
ed to glaciers was born. “It was quite
an intense experience,” Thomas Huber
said. “This is why our artworks are in-
tensive experiences as well.”
The experimental performance
“passage2011” was structured like
a drama and this is also how it is dis-
played: the short film is made up of
three different acts—the prelude, the
climax and the denouement, which can
either materialise in a catastrophe or in
an apotheosis, the glorification of the
protagonists.
“The whole project builds up to the
last act,” says Christian Schoen, the
curator of “passage2011, “and for us,
there was no doubt that it had to come
down to a fatal ending.” Failing is not
forbidden, as it is part of human exis-
tence. And that is the basis of the proj-
ect.
Was Sisyphus actually
happy?
The boat itself plays a number of roles
in the project: it is an artwork as well
as an instrument with a purpose. It
also reminds exhibition visitors of the
Sisyphean challenge Wolfgang and
Thomas faced.
As the story goes, Sisyphus was
eternally doomed to carry a stone up
a mountain, just to repeat the task as
soon as he was finished. Although this
sounds horrible, the famous conclud-
ing line of Albert Camus’s ‘The Myth
of Sisyphus”—”One has to imagine Si-
syphus happy”—suggests otherwise.
Displayed in the opening scene of the
short film component of the exhibi-
tion, the quote suggests that Wolfgang
and Thomas must, like Sisyphus, have
achieved some peace of mind when he
was able to stop thinking about his fate
and focus on the task at hand.
However, this was not entirely the
case. “Of course the artists started
reflecting at a certain point,” Christian
says. “This is why human existence is
destined to a catastrophe rather than
an apotheosis.” This statement has a
very personal touch, as soon as you
start looking for the origin of Wolf-
gang's and Thomas' action-arts, name-
ly the incident on Vatnajökull.
Return to Vatnajökull
The incident 25 years ago, which in-
spired “passage2011” in the Swiss
Alps, continues to drive the artists who
have returned to Iceland to work on a
new project called “Powerwalk. Going
for a charge.”
This time they plan to hike Vatna-
jökull again, using the wind—once
their fatal enemy—to generate electric-
ity. They’ll do this by wearing small,
self-made wind turbines on their backs
to collect the produced energy in spe-
cial batteries, which in turn will be used
for powering two washing machines
after their homecoming.
Once again Wolfgang and Thomas
will combine art, adventure and cre-
ative innovation, seeing themselves as
action-artists experimenting with the
loss of contact to reality due to an ex-
treme glorification of one's own deeds.
It is about achieving something that at
first seems to be impossible.
In the end, it’s about the
dialectic
When it comes to their new project
“Powerwalk. Going for a charge,” the
artists say they are a bit more political-
ly motivated. “We were driven by the
rather cynical idea that we could take
energy from Iceland to power the rest
of the continent,“ they explain.
They are referring to the real plans
of importing green energy from the
North Atlantic island to the UK, which
they believe to be a dangerous move
due to a lack of consciousness of en-
vironmental matters in continental Eu-
rope.
Nonetheless, Wolfgang and Thom-
as do not see themselves as protest-
ers and the core ideas that lead to the
“Powerwalk” are the reprocessing of
the incident 25 years ago in combina-
tion with creative power, innovation
and the lust for adventure.
So, it is not about moralising and
pointing fingers at other people, but
about making them reflect on these is-
sues themselves. Art has always been
dialectic and this is the purpose of
“passage2011” and “Powerwalk. Go-
ing for a charge.”
The Nature Of The Experiment
Two artists, clever ideas and a lot of adventure
Art
Matthias Fuchs
Words
Jónas Kellermeyer
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Issue 15 — 2013 22