in "Rest in Space" / exhibition catalogue, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo / Norway.

I would like to invite you on a journey. A journey that will take you to the realm of nomadic artists who have just set up their tents at Kunstnernes Hus.

"Rest in Space" is a nomadic camp, a vivid treasury.

Nomads are explorers. They follow the whispering of the winds and dive into the overwhelming bazaar offered by the world every single day. I carry everything I possess with me. Life is a river of no return. The stars send reflections to its surface, and someone sits on the bank gazing at them: Space. Offering an endless journey. Some people are like stones, at rest at the same spot while their spirits fly away, others are on a constant move, enriching their spirits with new images, smells, sounds, and cultures. Others hunt for their spirit restlessly.

I would like to invite you on a journey. Nomads are experiencers.

Craning necks of towers. Watching diamonds, ocean-green veils the eyes. Captured human identities. Relations between private histories and monumental architecture. Power and Politics. Spazashops in the centre of Johannesburg. Leaning against a nomadic backbone which is ever changing. Colourful sweets, black faces. Temporary. A moment of silence. Ganesha twists around cheerfully. Endless prayers turn into a scream. Sensuality. A careful look into the night. Window lights of strangers caught on photo paper, tracks of an unknown life, wide and as rich as the starry sky. Endless. Like the salt desert in Australia. Farmland, heat and hierarchies. A Fable. An Indian in India. Pressed under the arm of the woman who has given birth to it. A long journey. A ring. The Indian started dancing and she was alone again. Konchiki. A small girl stares motionless into nowhere, shy – and suddenly begins to jump. Angrily and with all her energy. A bed with a broken mattress is frozen in space and time.

Nomads are searchers.

A plane, turned upside down, carries the tragic myth of a people in New Zealand, its nourished hopes stuffed in a travel suitcase. Civilization is cut. Like the shining blue bodies of the bulls. Circumcision is a cut. A Xhosa in South Africa. A storyteller linking past and present. Roots. To find. Surgery Unit at ULEVAl. Medical devices and ancestors. A path. Research, search and surgery. A woman looks through the focus of her camera. Capturing a travelogue, an epic adventure. Documenting life. Monochromes erasing messages and noise. Transparent layers reveal the past, stirring in front of the eyes and deep down in the subconscious. Meditation. Seduction. Immersion. Losing control. Metal sheets move dangerously back and forth, filling the room with vibrations. As if to penetrate the walls.

There is a vision. Artists come together on a boat, souls floating on the waves. An invitation to move. Like the solid amethyst.

We would like to invite you on a journey.

It is time for departure.

Steffi Goldmann, 2002

* Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses (1842)