Passage 2011

In May 2011, Munich-based artists Thomas Huber and Wolfgang Aichner set off with a seventeen-foot boat on a journey of a few hundred miles that would nonetheless take several weeks—because the route would take them across Italy’s Zillertal Alps. Destined for the 2011 Venice Biennale, Huber and Aichner conceived of this seemingly Sisyphean task, Passage 2011, as a metaphor for human hubris and the pursuit of success. As neither expected to complete the pass, Passage 2011 would also serve as a study of failure.

Passage 2011: An Actionistic Transalpine Drama draws on the artists’ photographs and detailed journal entries to reconstruct this epic journey, its moments of heartwarming success and its physically and mentally testing travails, including one instance in which they had to rappel the cheery red boat down a steep rock face that dropped more than two hundred feet. As a finale, Huber and Aichner launched the boat in the Venice Lagoon for a triumphant cruise along the Grand Canal, where, as expected, it rapidly sank and had to be retrieved in order to be installed in its place at the Biennale.

Christian Schoen is an art historian, curator, director of Osram Art Projects, and assistant lecturer at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.