Passage 2011: An Actionistic Transalpine Drama

Artists: GÆG Wolfgang Aichner / Thomas Huber

Venue: Scuola dell`Angelo Custode

Passage 2011 is a curatorially pared back affair. There is the obligatory desk at the entrance, sporting both texts and bored invigilators and in the middle stands a jagged topped rectangular construction with screens on the long sides. The jagged top represents the alps and the novelty sized pin represents the progression of the titular passage, the depiction of which is hosted on the screens. Here we see two to three men struggling to push, lift, kick and shove a large fiberglass boat along a series of sternly unobliging screes, peaks and ravines. It’s comical, bathetic, admirably brave and pointless all at the same time. Especially when the red boat in question seem to have been hewn to the design of a toddler’s bath toy.

Nevertheless, the catalogue informs us that this mix of heroism and tragedy is exactly the point of the project. It certainly succeeds. One is left watching in awe of the physical effort for such an absurd aim. One also watches hoping to see when the explorers thoughts inevitably wander to the idea that maybe, despite completing the alpine safety and physical training, despite it being a brilliant idea (one of the few pub-plans to ascend the dizzying heights of corporate sponsorship and the ensuing obligations to execute said pub-plan) that maybe they wish they weren’t stuck in the alps, that maybe the boat should’ve been a symbolic one, or an origami one, and that, just possibly, they feel of a tinge of regret for deciding to carry a gargantuan, bright-red, comically juvenile bath toy up, and then down, one of the highest mountain ranges in the world.

João Abbott-Gribben