Sunday 19th March 2017, 2:30pm
Getaway #25: Jan Hostettler
Jan Hostettler chose this Sunday’s getaway destination.*)
– Upon being invited Jan replied he would love to. But he was about to leave to Istanbul by foot.
One year later, time and distance seem to have developped a quite bodily quality. Like when traveling meant that someone would leave for an indefinite amount of time and life would just go on and at some point, when you least expected it, this person would return, with long grown hair and a dusty coat from the endless roads, and immediately you would start talking a lot but somehow in between there would be these weird moments of silence and you would realize that you did pass a part of your life without each other and there was no way to make up for it.
Writing this I quickly check his website. His art activities simply stop the moment he leaves. One year ago. Somehow this feels right. –
*) Mirjam Bayerdörfer invited Jan Hostettler for the twentyfifth Outside Sunday.
____
[Report]
Heading towards the airport, the beginning is steep. It leads through the GZ Bucheggplatz, passing a Misthaufen. Further along the road we pass several problems that occur while moving forward : a bike with a flat tire and the guy reparing it, a silent walker with a wild look, a girl carrying her shoes in her hand.
We talk about spaces and working conditions for artists; about studio rent; about contracts, long and short term; about gentrification, of course.
we talk about whistling;
about singing;
about doing both while walking, or at while least moving forward.
about swiss pseudotraditional folklore;
about how goals and destinations become random once reached;
about the difference of a summit reached in solicity and the vatican/ rome always being reached in a crowd that arrives together with you
about the situation in istanbul
about ausschaffung
about walking lopsided
about nuclear power plants that were never in use and that now can be rented for your 60th birthday
about oldfashioned performance art
about forms of documentation
we laugh at church clocks
we enter what looks like a tilted richard serra on a roundabout
we share apples, chocolate, reformhausmango, some more nuts, and a single müsliriegel
we wonder which airplanes have the privilege to take off and land in the area that can be seen from the visitors terrace.
At the end we end up googling the Welcome Marketing Slogans of cities – the words that hit you in the head while you are still waiting for your luggage.
like
The City That Loves You
or
Incredinbourough
or
World Class. Swiss Made
or
The Capital Of Scandinavia
Mistaking the very last piece of the road twice, the second time we discover a poster of unknown purpose and origin, promoting a shopping area that seems to have never been built:
Enjoy The Circle.
Jan says he was way more laid back since his walking; knowing that he has everything on him; and at some point will arrive, if he still wants to.