The Living Art Museum cordially welcomes you to the exhibition The Expedition to the Magic Mountain, Monday August 21st, upon the new moon, between 6 – 8 pm.
The Expedition to the Magic Mountain (2013-2020)* is an experiment with time and space, exploring levels of consciousness, knowledge and sensibility, old and new. We want to go beyond the borders of self-assumed existential conditions, and at the same time we have to acknowledge and face past and present forces of creativity and destruction.
We approach them through art, literature, conversation, action. We leave the stage and at the same time remain, seeking, to be found within and without. We sense the project as a conception and birth of a single, fractured mind, individual works merge and flow together in collective, temporary spaces of experience. We excavate the wasteland of consumers, consumed with endless shortage and craving for more, when nothing more is to be had.
The Expedition is centred on the perception of contemporary European culture within the context of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, and shaped also by an extensive collaborative experience on the art of reading Iceland’s whereabouts in European history and culture. The novel is an endless exploration of human existence and echoes the shattering decline of modern European culture before the great wars in the desolate wastelands of contemporary capitalism.
In October 2013, a group of seven individuals went on an expedition from the edge of Europe to the stage of the novel. The group stayed at the Berghotel Schatzalp in Davos, which is one of former sanatoria in the region and the one Mann is believed to draw on for the novel’s Berghof Sanatorium. During their stay, the members of the expedition were the only guests at the Berghotel Schatzalp and this is where they recorded their impressions, perceptions and conversations in writing and on film.
The expedition is scheduled to run until 2020, with more exhibitions and performances held in galleries and other places in Iceland and on the European continent. The final results will appear in a book which will include essays, fragments and art work. The aim of the expedition is also to publish the first Icelandic translation of The Magic Mountain.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Expedition welcomes you to the following events:
Thursday September 7th, 8 pm – The Artist as a Medium.
Thursday September 14th, 8pm – Cartography and Translations.
Thursday September 21st, 8pm – Music from the Magic Mountain.
*Members of the expedition are Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir, Birna Bjarnadóttir, Gauti Kristmannsson, Haraldur Jónsson, Karlotta Blöndal, Steingrímur Eyfjörd and Unnar Örn Auðarson.
The project is supported by The Visual Art Fund, Hotel Holt, Hertz, Seglagerðin Ægir, Neskirkju, University of Iceland, Eimskip, Epal, Slippfélaginu, The German Embassy, Haugen gruppen ehf. and Ölgerðin.