Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, he said
Kunstlerhaus Vienna
Art&CeRZe Gallery, Zagreb
2024
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, he saidBeautiful, beautiful, beautiful, he said, consists of a rack with postcards, video (duration 15 minutes) and walltext.
Pag Island is located in the Adriatic sea. The island has a stark and otherworldly appearance, which is characterized by rocky, barren terrain, minimal vegetation, and a desolate beauty, which is often compared with a lunar landscape.
This work draws a line between embodied experience of walking as a movement and the projection of a walk. Here the route Neil Armstrong walked during the first moonwalk in 1969 is projected onto Pag Island as a ground to walk on. Can we imagine these realities converging? Can conceptual models of reality be confused with reality itself?
Polish linguist Alfred Korzybski argued that human knowledge of the world is limited both by the human nervous system and the languages humans have developed, and thus no one can have direct access to reality, given that the most we can know is that which is filtered through the brain's responses to reality. His best known dictum is "The map is not the territory" (source Wikipedia). He emphasized that we live in two worlds: in the world of language and symbols, and in the real world.
He observed that the human mind is only able to respond to the formed map, and completely forgets -in the extreme case- the territory present. Seen this way, everyday access to satellite imagery of the planet via several apps on our cell phones have changed our emotional orientation and relationship with the world.
Artist Robert Smithson stated that drawing a diagram, a ground plan of a house, a street plan to the location of a site, or a topographic map, is drawing a logical two dimensional picture. This picture rarely looks or feels like the real experience of a place.
Being on the ground, in movement, on-site, is different from looking at a set abstraction of a site. While being immersed, the activity of walking triggers a resonance between the environment as a sensual experience and making sense of this experience. Yes, we can make a trip in our minds, in our imagination, meanwhile making meaning of cultural narratives, sites and objects. Through such lenses we can see the landscape, the world, and learn to understand it.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, he said is an invitation and insistence on walking the ground.
