What happens if I walk from Innsbruck to Bozen?

14 days, 14 stops, 14 happenings, 1 wagon and myself.

Wagen D was an artwork that existed from the 20th of August 2021 to the 3rd of September 2021 and this is its documentation. In this project I walked from Innsbruck, Austria over the Brenner Pass to Bolzano, Italy and each day I produced a different performance which was conceived along the journey to serve as an immediate reflection on the experience. With this quite spontaneous approach, I was able to adapt more easily to the place, the people and my own state of being. Since the piece was temporary, documentation was crucial to then also be able to go back and reflect on the work’s many facets. I chose to film the performances, take an instant photo of the performance’s setting and write a diary in between the performances. After my arrival in Bolzano, I organized the documentation and reflected on what had happened. And this is where we are now. Throughout this documentation, I will describe the process and results of this work, with the help of diary entries, commentary on said texts, and a collection of short essays reflecting on the artwork. First I will give some background on the route I walked, why I chose it, its history and its political and social significance today. Then I will describe the tradition, history and recent developments of the artist’s journey. When this background is given the actual documentation of Wagen D becomes the focal point. How did I get this idea to walk (very unprepared I must say) from Innsbruck to Bolzano with a hand wagon? What happened during the journey and how did I react to these events? And finally, how did my performances shape and reflect on the journey? This leads us to the last section of this documentation in which I try to make sense of this happening. I go into aspects of the act of walking, the significance of the wagon, what performance spaces are and could be, travel and tourism, and a broader way of how we perceive foreignness and how to deal with vulnerability. For these essays, I explored various art practices, sociological and psychological processes, as well as examined my own experiences on the road.
Ultimately this project was an exploration of personal, cultural and artistic borders and boundaries and how to approach and eventually overcome them.