Documentary Reality – Crossing the Atlantic

Where do we find time to truly engage with art, while being caught between the constraints of hyper availability and keeping up with a fast-pace society? A five-strong crew of artists and curators withdrew from the world into an abstract emptiness to regain what often seemed lost: Time for debate and reflection.

A journey across the Atlantic.

Thoughts

Thoughts

Download the book Without the Viewer

The attraction of a beautiful void and the search for literal oblivion has already drawn many expeditions into the eternal blue, creating an extraordinary, lyrical nomadism at sea. The questions is: what can artists and curators find on a journey across the Atlantic, besides an image of an infinite void?

Questions of ephemerality, documentary reality, and the effect of an absent audience comprised the starting point for a journey that took a five-strong crew across the Atlantic. We did not set sail to tell a story, but to make a story, one that would otherwise not take place in reality.

The journey at sea offered us what had been lost in our everyday lives: endless moments to reflect upon, the freedom to shape reality, fiction, and memory. Once we returned to land, we held tight to our newfound freedom, ultimately channeling it into this exhibition, "Without a Viewer", in which artistic and curatorial voices mingle to create a polyphonic situation.

Just as our mind floats effortlessly between the real and the imaginary, the book accompanying the exhibition is a work of fiction and non-fiction alike, a book unbothered by rules and in command of its own reality.

Throughout the journey, ten perspectives on substantial issues were introduced. They were impulses that provided an open platform for on board debates. These critical reflections in the course of the journey served as thematic navigation points.


Failed Telegrams

Die Realität ist nicht ortsgebunden. Eine Wahrheit, die sich im Fernweh der Seemänner widerspiegelt und sich im Heimweh in Luft aufzulösen scheint.

Während die industrielle Romantik mit 39'000 Pferdestärken angetrieben wird, bleibt die Zeit stehen. Und doch – Stillstand ausgeschlossen.

Aus dem Provisorium des Unterwegsseins wird Heimat auf Zeit. Jegliches Fernweh verschwindet der Unendlichkeit des Wassers und der eigenen Hilflosigkeit.

Ausgeliefert sich selbst, den Seemännern, dem Kapitän und vermeintlichen Druck frei zu sein. Bis die Strömung dich erfasst.

Information

Information

The research and crossing took place from March 26, 2012 to April 22, 2012.

Port of departure: Lisbon
Port of arrival: Montreal
Vessel: Hanjin Palermo