Six Routes to the Himalayas

Six artists from different cultural backgrounds spent October 1999 trekking in Nepal. Their experiences varied a great deal:some found the trip physically extremely exhausting,while others had difficulties with the primitive living conditions and the issues faced during the trip.Nevertheless,after the trip everybody agreed that it had changed their views of life and perhaps also their self-perception in one way or another.

Text: Xu Bing, Honoré δ'O, Simryn Gill, Jussi Heikkilä, Hannu Jännes, Hans Hamid Rasmussen and Liisa Roberts

Hans Hamid Rasmussen: The most interesting thing was the chance to meet new people, each of whom in their own ways raised my consciousness to a new level. The chance to meet people who express themselves through art. And the local people, whom I managed to understand at times despite the huge cultural differences.

GREETINGS FROM THE FOOT OF A HOLY MOUNTAIN

I have just returned from a long trip to the lofty Himalayas. It was an immense experience to see the holy mountain Sagarmatha, or Mount Everest, as it is rather boringly called. Sagarmatha is not pointed and aggressive in the same way as so many other peaks, instead it rises smooth and seeming slightly bashful to its height of 8,848 metres. Despite its elevation, the mountain is not the hardest to climb; Ama Dablam, only 6,856 metres high, sticks out from the mountain range like an arrowhead. Its vertical sides are an extremely strenuous trial for those who wish to live dangerously. However, it is Sagarmatha that has claimed the most human lives on its gloomy, windy slopes. I myself was content with looking at the peaks from afar.

It is only now, afterwards, that I am able to think of the real meaning of my trip. It is far from easy to try and create a contemplative relationship with reality if one has to struggle and trek from seven am to five or six p.m., climbing constantly uphill and downhill. Even just looking at the scenery feels difficult, as the need to make contact with one’s surroundings makes details seem magnified. One’s eyes try to seek out something comprehensible in order to make that contact.

I look down the precipice and realise what a false feeling of security is created by the bamboo shoots growing off the edge just where Simryn Gill is walking. I wonder whether Simryn too imagines herself fallen a couple of hundred metres below us, impaled by the green shoots of bamboo. Because of the physical strain I hear nothing but the blood thumping in my ears and see nothing but huge people, yaks and flowers. I want to become a child again so as to take up less space.

I ’m sitting under the bright blue sky and in the distance I can see the holy mountain. It is as if everywhere is empty. I think to myself that I have no words to describe my experience of the beauty of the mountains; that this very trekking was needed for this moment to be so beautiful. And yet seeing a high mountain is not art. Art is language with roots deep in the subconscious, and the art of the mountain is austere and gloomy, mortal rather than verbal. As I wander home the contours of the mountain are outlined in my mind as illuminated lines against the dark sky. And when I ’m dozing in my sleeping bag, the holy mountain follows my soul into its dreams, and the night is calm.

Getting to know a certain person during the trip was important to me. The most powerful experience for me was the fact that we all had to reveal our weaknesses, prove our strengths and feel dependence in freedom. When you’re walking through the labyrinthine streets of Kathmandu and suddenly all the light vanishes and the fear of losing control overwhelms you, it’s good to have a friend who shows you the way to the light.

KATHMANDU, NEPAL 22 OCTOBER 1999
LIISA ROBERTS AND SIMRYN GILL

We have just returned to Kathmandu. For both of us the project has been an unprecedented, unusual, strange and incredibly stretching and intense experience. But most importantly a very valuable experience which we feel we will draw on for a long time to come on many different levels.

In many ways the experience of the trek has been intensely awakening and enlivening. We were confronted with circumstances we rarely if ever find ourselves in, at least not in the ‘liberated’ globalised parts of the world which we normally inhabit.

It seems that the experience has been about confronting ourselves and our own coping behaviours under quite alarming circumstances. Living together in a tent made for one and a small hotel room, over three weeks, both of us had to starkly face understanding what it means to be a part of a group and the sort of courage that is necessary to openly realize and encourage what is really best for others and not only for oneself. We both feel that to some degree we coped well while at other moments we made definite mistakes which we should learn from.

Strangely, in all this, during the trek Nepal receded and the circumstances of our situation came to the fore. For us it led to some very intense existential discussions like: where does fundamental security come from? What dictates reality? What does it mean to be generous? How are people apparently in a public sphere but still very enclosed in their own private experience? What does it mean to be so totally dependent on another person?

We also had many insights into how localised the apparent sense of globalisation really is, realising in the flesh the true polarities of the world and the stark reality of a large percentage of it as being brought about precisely through the logic of global capitalism. We thought about what this might mean for us as contemporary artists – our activity is so caught up in the rhetoric of globalisation. In this regard, we also reflected very much on what it might mean that we were ostensibly to be ‘making art’ in a place where there isn’t really any room for contemporary art as we know it. What in fact was our position in the situation? This further led us to reflect on our lives as series of luxurious options and to intense conversations about the difficulties of being and its paradoxical relationship to practising - i.e. the many contradictions between the activity of making art and also being part of the structures that claim to sustain the activity.

 Jussi Heikkilä: The breaks I had to take gave me the opportunity to get to know some of the local people better: it was so interesting, such bighearted people! Their culture was also magnificent (and as diverse as it is, not always easy, if at all possible, to grasp). The wildlife and some birds in particular impressed me. Higher up on the mountains the moonlight was incredibly bright.

The hardest part for me was having to part from the others right at the beginning. Scandinavian Airlines had sent my luggage to India, including my broad spectrum antibiotics (I had an inflammation of the middle ear in both ears before the trip), and I had to wait for its return for five days. I guess it was because of my slightly weakened physical condition that the start of the trekking felt so enormously strenuous. At times I felt that my body just wasn’t going to make it. The group’s break-up was mentally quite distressing. And Nepal in itself, what it looks like and how it feels, the suffering, the poverty – one never gets used to it. How could you harden your heart every day?

Xu Bing: This experience has a special connection to me being an artist in China in the past. The connection is that prior and during the Cultural Revolution,artists went to farms, factories or rural places to be with labourers, to live with labourers. This is to make intellectuals develop commonalties with the masses. In addition, intellectuals were to understand details about the labourers’ work and life. During this experience, the intellectuals were supposed to collect as much as possible ideas and inspiration. Good art can only be made this way because artists should think like the people. These activities stem from Mao Zhe Dong’s understanding of art, which is that art is from real life, art is higher than real life, and art returns to real life.

Most delightful was drawing from observation. Using characters instead of strokes to make shapes, making a figurative drawing out of characters. This can be a drawing, or a work of calligraphy, or journal, etc. Since I participated in western contemporary art, I have not drawn for more than a decade. Now I was sitting in nature and “drawing from observation”. I was drawing again, but everything is different. This makes me excited.

Being on the mountains was really not much difficulty for me, because the poor living conditions are similar to where I came from. When I first arrived in Kathmandu, I didn ’t know what kind of things to record for work. This city was so poor and dirty, I didn’t know whether to record the reality of dirtiness and poverty, or their traditions, or what influences that western culture has influenced this city. I just didn’t know what should have interested me. At that time, I felt insecure about my identity there. I felt like years ago when I was in China, I saw westerners interested in certain things. Now I feel like I have been given a reverse status, seeing things through eyes of another person, and I questioned why I was interested in certain things.

Honoré δ'O: I ’m well and try to care. I hardly communicate, what means that I’m working quite… My need for consolation (compensation for what I could not find here…) was expressed in irregular and deconstructive life. From my sculptural images it’s possible to recognise inner voodoo, extra Hindu, Buddhistic skylines, animal sports, dualistic mountains, discoursing firework…

The word satisfaction became much richer, motilium and immodium danced together: when I was standing with a mountain in my back, another mountain stared my belly, the dust in Kathmandu is as pure as the lack of oxygen in a glass above 4000 m, I never had this thrilling before: even my jetlag is confused.

h+ ”the aorta isn ’t for the heart what top means for Himalayas ” = kisses

DELICATE BALANCE SIX ROUTES TO THE HIMALAYAS JUN 22 – SEP 10, 2000

The core of the exhibition Delicate Balance is the joint trekking trip of an international group of artists to Nepal.Six artists,whose art in various ways reflects observa- tion of the environment, were invited to join the project.They are Chinese- born,now New Yorker Xu Bing,Belgian Honoré .’O,Indian-born Simryn Gill who now lives in Sidney,Australia,Jussi Heikkilä from Finland, Norwegian-Moroccan Hans Hamid Rasmussen and Finnish-American Liisa Roberts.The exhibition will be based on material collected on the trip and processed afterwards as well as shared and indi- vidual views and ideas. Exhibition is supported by Sokos.