Ann-Sofi Sidén on Another Way
The exploration of man’s condition and history has been a central theme in my art. I want to illuminate the individual’s presence and often paradoxical living conditions within a political, cultural, economical, or social system. As one of many of my projects that try to convey this, I started a trip on horseback through Texas in July 2002.
A distance that takes about three hours in an air-conditioned car became something completely different on horse. With temperatures often above 30°c there was only one possibility – to travel slowly. In a slow movement forward the traveler finds himself in a state where thoughts are allowed to flow. This absolute naked state of mind let me, with all my senses, experience a new side of American culture. It took 25 days to travel the 400 km (250 miles), via San Antonio’s highways in central Texas to the final destination, the Lyndon B Johnson Space Center outside of Houston, also known as ground control.
The destination and the reduced tempo strengthened the paradoxical elements of the ride. I rode on heavily frequented highways through urban centers, worn-out suburbs, and sleepy villages. I passed old western towns as well as modern industrial farms of rice, wheat, and cotton.
Sometimes I rode the so-called rodeo trails. In the past, large cattle herds could be taken all the way from Mexico to Texas to be sold at big auctions with private rodeos. This tradition still exists albeit on a smaller scale; large groups of horses and riders meet once a year and camp along the roads to different Texas rodeos. The horse and I traveled in this landscape, constantly directed to the side of the road. My husband, Paul, filmed certain parts of the trip and made night-time arrangements for the horse and trailer by churches, country stores, bars, and ranches.
Lunch breaks would take place on a gigantic parking lot outside a Wal-Mart or by a modified oil drum functioning as a grill, constructed at a dusty crossroad in the middle of nowhere. My days on horseback were an oscillating anachronism. Sometimes I didn’t know what time period I found myself in – past, present or an alternative future. I tried to visualize that insight in the video work 3 MPH (From Horse to Rocket), a detailed study of a landscape, its living places, its malls, and its historic mixture of people and animals.
The work is now in the permanent collections of Moderna Museet and the Spanish pilgrimage site Santiago de Compostela. Through the project Another Way I want to make it possible for young artists, studying at the Royal University College of Fine Arts (KKH) in Stockholm, and for teachers at the school, to explore the traditional freedom ritual – traveling slowly – in a modern context and then work with the experience. Based on their personal artistic ambitions, participants choose their own mode of transportation.
In the beginning of September 2009 we will together leave KKH, on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm. The last night and the destination is the Wanås Foundation in the south of Sweden. The trip is approximately 600 km (370 miles) and will be completed without the use of artificial fuels. The choice of transportation affects how the different projects will be carried out and represented artistically. There will be a group exhibition at Wanås in 2010, with the journeys as its starting point.
