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Good Trip Bad Trip.reloaded, Exhibitions of an Hour, Dutch Art Institute 2010

Outro

It has been proposed that travelling to a foreign place shrouded in myths such as Siberia, to do artistic research and make art, is an enterprise that can only lead to proper results when artists already have serious knowledge and understanding of the local context, its traditions and its customs, the way of life. But how can one have this without spending a lot of time and connecting to the people of a place?
In her book about the lure of the local, that is the pull of place that affects each and everyone of us because it discloses our politics and spiritual legacies, Lucy Lippard writes that she sees a future for artistic practices which pay attention to that which is close and take responsibility for it. 'The potential of an activist art practice that raises consciousness about land, history, culture, and place and is a catalyst for social change cannot be underestimated, even though this promise has yet to be fulfilled. Artists can make the connections visible. They can guide us through sensuous kinesthetic responses to topography, lead us from archaeology and landbased social history into alternative relationships to place.'* I can agree with Lippard's observation, as it seems to me that artists can be home both anywhere and nowhere, because their home is the art they make.

Looking back at the exhibitions of an hour, striking is that many of them had a tentative character. This seems to connect to how Emilio Moreno described his work, as a history of attempts to connect with his wanderings across the island, so as to, tentatively, put his finger on some essence. In a way, all the exhibitions are attempts to tell stories, stories in which the everyday and the mythical come together, stories that tell of wanderings and failure, stories in which smaller or larger actions are portrayed.
Walter Benjamin, one of the first radical thinkers who addressed the immense changes which 19th century modernization brought about in all spheres of life, wrote that due to this process the mythical aspects of modern culture have been obscured. His lifework was dedicated to digging into the archaic layers, bringing that to the surface what he found relevant because it still has something to say to us today. The trip to Siberia and the stay at this rare island called Olkhon, so it seems to me, made us part, if only for a short while, of a sphere where the myth is not buried but still alive. So how can we tell its story?

Walter Benjamin, Art of Storytelling**
In the 1930s Walter Benjamin wrote a terse observation on the effects caused by a growing army of apparatuses that bring all kinds of information to us. Central in his text is the impoverishment of personal experience, that is, as it were, being replaced with all sorts of ready-made experiences. Benjamin starts his text with the example of newspapers that each morning bring us all information on what's happening in the world; yet, he says, in our own lives we are short of wonderful stories. And so Benjamin retells the story of King Psammenitus as written down by historian Herodotus in his chronicle of the ancient times.
Psammenitus, King of the Egyptians, having been taken prisoner by Cambyses, King of the Persians, was exposed to public humiliation. Cambyses ordered that the Egyptian king should be placed in a position where he would face the street where the Persian triumphal procession would pass. He had it so arranged that the prisoner first saw his daughter moving past, now a maid-servant carrying a pitcher to the well. While all the Egyptians shed their tears over this spectacle, Psammenitus stood motionless, his eyes fixed on the ground. And he continued to do so when soon hereafter his son walked by who, with a rope round his neck and a horse bit in his mouth, was led to the place of his execution. The moment however Psammenitus saw one of his servants in the chain of prisoners, a man who was now old and reduced to poverty, he struck his head with both his fists and displayed all signs of grief.
This tale, says Benjamin, shows us the secret of a true story: it does not exhaust itself. It saves the power stored within and is able to unfold itself after long time. Montaigne returned to the story of the Egyptian king, asking himself: why is it that he begins to cry when he sees the old servant, why not before? Montaigne's answer: 'He was by then filled with sorrow, so a small addition sufficed to take his fences down.' But also other readings are possible. Benjamin tells us about a meeting with his friends, during which he asked them what they thought of the king's behaviour. One of his friends argued: 'The king is not moved by the fate of the kingly; that is his own.' Another one said: 'Much on stage gets to us that does not in our life; to the king the servant is merely an actor.' And a third one: 'Intense grief gets stored within and only comes out when relaxation sets in. The view of the servant provided that relaxation.' – 'If this story would have occurred today,' a fourth one remarked, 'then next morning all the newspapers would have written: to Psammenitus his servant was dearer than his children.' Certain is, so says Benjamin, that each reporter would explain it in a trice. Herodotus does not explain it with a word. His report is the driest. That's why this story from ancient Egypt is still capable to make us wonder and ponder. It resembles the grains of seed which, stored for thousands of years sealed off from the air in the chambers of the pyramids, have maintained their germinative power until today.

Art has a similar power, this is what I believe. Maybe, indeed, the exhibitions of an hour and what they told us about that wonderful experience of the trip in the Trans-Siberian Express to Irkutsk in Siberia and that of the stay at Olkhon island and at Lake Baikal, are tentative for the moment. But then, we have a whole life ahead to make up the story.

Mark Kremer