Me: And how high did you get?
Icarus: I was able to touch the sun with my hands.
Me: Damn, how annoying!
Icarus: Never mind, there are worse plunges than freefall.
After the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, the numbers of those lost in the ship disaster were overshadowed by the millions killed in the First World War. Parallel to this, the advance of civil aviation resulted in ships losing their dominance as a means of mass transportation. Today’s challenge is that of humanity venturing into space. It is no longer a question of discovering the vast expanse spread out before us but rather what is above us, which leads to the question of where from and where to, the issue of the sense and the objective and ultimately that of God. In humanity’s agenda of ever faster, ever higher, ever further no provision has been made for just pausing to reflect. A characteristic of the discord in today’s Western societies is the intent to distance ourselves from where we actually want to go: the all-embracing feeling of belonging fades into the distance.
If the activists Wolfgang Aichner and Thomas Huber had made their project more contemporary, they would have had to pull a rocket over the Alps rather than a ship. Yet the metaphor of the ship is more open and inviting; it implies that everyone has a place inside it. Their ship is made from postmodern material, from synthetics, and it has no mast, i.e. no crucifix implying Christian salvation. Their project is also meant to be read as a statement against the common practice within the art business of transporting opulent artwork to and fro around the world, which certainly appears questionable from an ecological point of view. Maybe a ship is what is needed – one that is stranded in order to demonstrate the situation humanity now finds itself in globally. Means are becoming ever more scarce and somehow it is all leading nowhere; the intimidator has become the intimidated. Yet the tide is in the process of turning… Making this ship of ours push on ahead despite all odds: therein lies the assignment and crux of future generations. Since the artists are moving at and around the boat but not in the boat, their mountain trek aboard a ship does seem somewhat bound by fate. It would appear that, for an artificially created moment, humanity’s plight lies in their hands.
AR
Image: Ai Weiwei: The Wave’, 2005, porselein / porcelain, Private Collection, courtesy Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne
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