My recent artistic practice has ben looking at Heros of Old, in particular Thor Heyerdahl the adventure and scientist who sailed on a raft from South America to Tahiti to prove a theory.

My approach was to use a picture of the hero as a base for a video performance. The intention was not to recreate the picture but to use it as a stage of performative exploration. See picture above, a cropped still of the performance.

My fascination with Heyerdahl is not al to do with the Heroic, to some extent he is also a trickster figure, a character who goes against the norm. I’m particularly fond of his reasoning for going to Fatu Hiva the most remote island he could find and i quote:

“A terrible war had just raged. Now they were inventing new types of arms, worse than ever before. Disagreements in politics, in morals, in philosophy, in religion. Who could feel safe to follow in the footsteps of such a generation? It was better to begin to look for a safer side-track. I began to feel like a prisoner calmly preparing to jump off a train that was on a wrong track.” Thor Heyerdahl describing his thoughts in 1930 for the book “Fatu-Hiva, Back to Nature”

But I’m not the only one to take inspiration from Heyerdahl, there has ben a expedition Tangora that recreated the Kon Tiki voyage and most recently production has started on a feature film to be released this time next year and hear are some bits I stole from their face book page.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=01YDGLdLJU4%3Frel%3D0

Links:

English article from newsinenglish.no

Facebook page facebook.com/kontikifilmen

The official website kontikifilmen.no