NO WAY OUT OF THE END OF THE CIRCLE

Me: Reinforced concrete.

Nature: It gets brittle and the metal will rust. Everything that exerts pressure will at some point collapse and slowly but surely we’ll overgrow it.

Me: What about the energy of good ideas?

Nature: Who needs that?

Do eccentrics change the world? The idea of using an old steamboat for the rubber trade is a good one. This is a way of earning the money needed to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazon jungle, which is where Caruso will sing. It’s just a shame that the river that is suitable for the ship is behind a wooded ridge. Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, who was called Fitzcarraldo by the Spanish-speaking natives, came up with the clever idea of merely pulling the ship up and over the mountain. Helped by a formidable effort on the part of the natives they actually managed to pull off this stroke of genius. But then a strange feeling overcame the natives; in order to calm the river spirits they sabotaged the project and the ship that was sacred to them was allowed to drift away in the rapids.

This is where the end of the seafaring metaphor becomes visible: its end joins back up with the beginning. The meta-metaphor of the Fitzcarraldo myth comprises it all: gods or no gods, no matter what lengths the secularised individual goes to in order to make the impossible possible, there is no escaping the spirit of nature, that harmoniously comprised finiteness of all that flourishes and all that is aspired to. Funnily enough, the filmmaker Werner Herzog saw his own film as a big metaphor. He just did not know what for.

In addition, the Fitzcarraldo story evokes a successful art strategy: the idea of having to create something spectacular so that something even more spectacular can be made. What came first: the inflated prices that enabled artists to have the most expensive artwork in the world made? Or the most expensive artwork in the world that led to the prices of the artist’s other works to become inflated? A diamond-studded skull cannot talk. Questions to Damien Hirst.

AR

Image: Damien Hirst, For the Love of God, Scull with diamonds, 2007

Fitzcarraldo – Of Course! Shackleton – Who?

Boat over mountain = Fitzcarraldo. Get it? Such an obvious quotation (or is it homage to a great film?) requires a second glance: what do they have in common; what are the differences? Ultimately, Fitzcarraldo is about a purely cultural conflict, as Western civilisation and its messianic culture sought to convert so-called primitive civilisations by way of an opera house.

In the film the boat stands for the steadfast faith in the achievements of one’s own culture and civilisation, whereas here at passage the boat is a manually crafted artefact, both a functionalised means of transportation and a metaphorical object.

A fire-red boat upon a glacier, this whale of the climatologic conscience, the individualised attestation of our destruction of the Earth, starts off as a strong image. But it is also a human battle, the artist’s battle – not only against Nature but above all against a self-imposed objective. The boat was intended to cross the Alps to reach Venice, that concentration of Western culture turned to stone, to the most significant art event in the world. Great! Sensational! The louder the drums, the stronger the echo. But up on the mountain, all is calm. The same old game: the battle against the elements and the laws of nature. Dangers abound; landslides, storms, snow. The chance that it will fail is big. Will the boat ever reach Venice safely in order to make contact with water for the very first time? And if so, where will its journey head?

CS