2023, Walk, Flags, Mapping drawings, Installation, Talk
Hosted by Lemme (Sion/CH) & Zur frohen Aussicht (Ernen/CH), curated by Josiane Imhasly
Since the 19th century, various "corrections" have been made to straighten and narrow the riverbed of the Rhone, which today, under the influence of climate change, are causing increased flooding. The negative consequences of the modern desire to control nature are also manifested in the accelerated melting of the Rhone glacier.
In ローヌ巡礼/Walking with the Rhone, Willimann/Arai hiked along the Rhone for eight days, following a pilgrimage route – thought not to Santiago de Compostela, but in the opposite direction, upstream. Referring to Japanese traditions, in which nature beings like ancient trees, mountains or landscapes are places of pilgrimage, the destination of Willimann/Arai’s pilgrimage walk was the Rhone Glacier, the source of the Rhone River.
Locals and audiences were invited to join individual stages of the hike and to share their stories about the Rhone with Willimann/Arai. Drawing from these narrations and their extensive research into local folk tales and historical images, Willimann/Arai attempted to retrace pre-modern perceptions of landscape and the voices of their more-than-human inhabitants – and identified connections to Japanese animist concepts.
Through the physical action of walking, these polyphony of stories interwove with the traversed landscape, which they mapped in hand-drawn drawings.
Beside the walk itself, the project included two exhibitions in Sion and Ernen and a public talk with the Catholic priest and philosopher Vitus Nwosu.
▶︎ Publication Interweaving Stories With Landscapes: The gift exercise / Invitation 9: Sion – Furka, ローヌ巡礼/Walking with the Rhone in online journal INSERT. Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries, Vol. 5 (2024)
Solo Exhibition at Lemme, Sion/CH
In the exhibition space Lemme in Sion – starting point and base station of the pilgrimage walk – Willimann/Arai exhibited a selection of reproductions of paintings, prints and technical plans that they had collected during their research. Relating these to the structure of the space/sculpture, Willimann/Arai created speculative connections between depictions from Japanese and European pilgrimage contexts, mythological beings and representations of the Rhone river and the Rhone glacier. > web archive
Exhibition Zur frohen Aussicht, Ernen/CH
As part of the exhibition Zur frohen Aussicht in Ernen, Willimann/Arai decorated the village hall with one of their hand-made pilgrimage flags. Furthermore, they displayed an installation of topographical maps in a shop window, on which the entire hiking route was marked. For the duration of the walk, the individual maps were continuously replaced by mapping drawings made by the artists. These were drawn by Willimann/Arai every evening to document the experiences and stories they had gathered during the day and sent by post to Ernen. > web archive