Sailors, mermaids and the depths

Unfinished Journeys, in Norway's Nasjonalmuseet, approaches the theme of the journey from a variety of angles; but the water-related pieces are the most powerful and memorable part of the show.

Ascoltate come sturo l'abisso / Ora lo scandalo lo darò io [Listen to how I free the depths / Now I will give it scandal...].

Vinicio Capossela creates a joyful piece like Pryntyl from a dark fable by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Scandale aux abysses. The double album, Marinai, profeti e balene [Sailors, prophets and whales], is as unpredictable as the sea and the oceans that are its subject: light and epic, awesome and solar. Maybe I owe my obsessive and almost hypnotic focus on some of the works in Unfinished Journeys, the exhibit at the Nasjonalmuseet, both to the fact that I listened repeatedly to the album as well as to the discreet charm of the landscape of the Bay of Oslo. This account is not an impartial one, but describes the heart of the water-related pieces — the most powerful and memorable part of the show.

The obscure dynamics motivating the characters and the even more mysterious logic of economic development define the plot of Abyss (2010) by Knut Asdam. The video, assembled by alternating mostly close-ups and long shots, was made in the eastern zone of London that will host the 2012 Olympics. The Thames is a discreet and precise presence perceived along the routes that O, the protagonist, and the other characters follow on the Docklands Light Railway. Ocean depths — no longer interior — are the motor of the story in another of the exhibit's important video pieces, Ten Thousand Waves (2010) by Isaac Julien.

Top: Isaac Julien, <em>Yishan Island, Voyage (Ten Thousand Waves)</em>, 2010. Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Above: Francis Alÿs, <em>Watercolor (Trabzon, Turkey - Aqaba, Jordan)</em>, 2010. Courtesy of Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich — Top: Isaac Julien, *Yishan Island, Voyage (Ten Thousand Waves)*, 2010. Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Above: Francis Alÿs, *Watercolor (Trabzon, Turkey - Aqaba, Jordan)*, 2010. Courtesy of Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich

In recent years works have been done — like Solid Sea Case 01: The Ghost Ship by Multiplicity — that address tragedies at sea objectively through the use of underwater cameras and interviews with the people involved. Starting with a tragic and true story from eight years ago, the death of twenty-three Chinese clam fishermen in the English seas, Julien weaves together distant places (the English coast, Shanghai and the Chinese regions of Guangxi and Fujian), earthly and unearthly dimensions (a mythological one, featuring the goddess Mazu, a cinematographic one, featuring the film Goddess, and an hyperreal one featuring rescue operations), artistic languages (calligraphy, poetry, music, cinema) and various historical periods (an undefined past, the 1930s, 2004, 2010). This complex story is, in turn, projected on nine screens — alternating and multiplying scenes and shots — freely arranged in the museum's graceless Art Nouveau hall.

Robert Smithson, <em>Monuments of Passaic,</em> 1967. Courtesy of Nasjonalmuseet — Robert Smithson, *Monuments of Passaic,* 1967. Courtesy of Nasjonalmuseet

Tacita Dean's piece, The Russian Ending (2001), is cultured and ironic. The series of etchings hints at possible endings to explorations that ended badly, with sunken ships and limp dirigibles. The title refers to a practice in early 20th century Danish cinema when films were made with two endings — a happy one and a tragic one (for the Russian audience).

In There is always a day away (2011), Runo Lagomarsino accumulates a small collection of objects which refer more or less directly to great explorations and centuries of colonialism: miniature ships, corks, napkins, magnifying glasses, books, bags of sugar, lottery tickets.

Maybe I owe my obsessive and almost hypnotic focus on some of the works in Unfinished Journeys to the fact that I listened repeatedly to the album as well as to the discreet charm of the landscape of the Bay of Oslo

Knut Åsdam, <em>Abyss</em>, 2010. Courtesy of Nasjonalmuseet — Knut Åsdam, *Abyss*, 2010. Courtesy of Nasjonalmuseet

In Watercolor (2010), Francis Alÿs moves on the edge between travel and language. The waters of two "colored" seas, the Black Sea and the Red Sea, are mixed by filling up a bucket of water on the banks of the Trabzon in Turkey and emptying it in Aqaba in Jordan. Damn simple — and effective.

Tacita Dean, <em>The Russian Ending</em>, 2001. Courtesy of Nasjonalmuseet — Tacita Dean, *The Russian Ending*, 2001. Courtesy of Nasjonalmuseet

Two works by different artists establish (perhaps unintentionally) a heart-rending affinity — an impossible passage of testimonials narrates two unexpectedly complementary journeys in opposite directions across the Atlantic. In Brendan's Isle (2010), Fiona Tan recounts the legendary journey of the Irish monk Brendan, who, in the sixth century AD, was supposed to have crossed the ocean starting in Europe, finding, along the way, the island that would bear his name on many maps without ever being identified with certainty. On the other hand, a photograph shows the Dutchman Bas Jan Ader, who died prematurely in 1975 while crossing the ocean solo from Cape Cod to Ireland on a small sailboat, the "Ocean Wave," to realize the project In Search of the Miraculous. For other Norwegian heroes, like anthropologist and explorer Thor Heyerdahl, captain of Kon-Tiki and other risky expeditions across the oceans, things ended much better.

Rosa Barba, <em>Outwardly from Earth's Center</em>, 2007. Courtesy of carlier | gebauer, Berlin and Galleria Giò Marconi, Milan — Rosa Barba, *Outwardly from Earth's Center*, 2007. Courtesy of carlier | gebauer, Berlin and Galleria Giò Marconi, Milan

Given the artist's young age, the hero of Joseph Conrad's 1917 novel also comes to mind, but unfortunately Ader was swallowed by his "shadow line." The last verse of Capossela's ballad Le Pleiadi would most probably have rung familiar to Ader:

S'alza in cielo ora la Croce del Sud / Notte alta io avanzo da solo / Fino ai confini delle Pleiadi / Fino agli estremi confini del mare / Ma io non ti dico tutto, con Te consigliati in cuore / E da te stesso scegli la via. [The Southern Cross now rises high in the sky / Night high I go forth alone / To the edges of the Pleiades / To the end of the sea / But I will not tell you everything, guide yourself with your heart / And choose the way on your own.]

Through 20 May 2012
Unfinished Journeys
Nasjonalmuseet, Museum of Contemporary Art
Bankplassen 4, Oslo

Sailors, mermaids and the depths

Unfinished Journeys, in Norway's Nasjonalmuseet, approaches the theme of the journey from a variety of angles; but the water-related pieces are the most powerful and memorable part of the show.

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