W139 solo, Nov. 2007

W139 Interview       The Center for the Advancement of Recreation and Leisure is a destination. What I'm doing at the moment is mapping out different routes and ways of getting there.       W139 - Amsterdam    

 Excerpt from interview with curator Hesse Mcgraw

HM: That brings up this issue of the attachments that you make to culture at large. There tends to be some catalyst, which varies wildly between umbrellas, a river, stray dogs, drugs, and visionary architecture. You seem to approach these catalysts as a means of making a larger attachment to a given community or culture. In one of your texts, you’ve written: “from stray dogs to speed boats to mega tourist resorts on deserted islands or the discovery of a returning wilderness in an abandoned zoo in the Netherlands … these places become models in tourism or personally reflected souvenirs.” There is a certain poetry in the interchangeability of these catalysts. Can you articulate your attraction to these catalysts?

EvR: When I’m working through my process, there may be some assumptions, because I’m often traveling somewhere and I may have read some guidebook. I’m actually going somewhere, standing there and trying to read the city and to figure out what triggers my imagination and how I can work within the vocabulary of the specific place. I’m trying to extract elements from the city, for instance in Tbilisi with the stray dogs…