Endurance

The Woodvale- Atlantic race begins in the Canary Islands and culminates in Antigua in mid-January. It is a race of epic proportion pitting rowing crews of four, two, and solo sailors against the open ocean, each other, and themselves. Having recently witnessed the arrival of the first two-man crew to complete the crossing I had many questions and comments that I am sure are quite common amongst the ordinary observer. Why would you voluntarily subject yourself to 100 days at sea in a rowboat? Why would you take the risk with your life and your sanity for an experience or a title? Are they narcissistic, full of hubris, mad? Is there something more here?
I argue that they are perfectly sane, more so than you or I. It is in the quest of the unknown about one's world, mind, and purpose that they race. In now way do I suggest that what is learned will result in enlightenment, but it will fundamentally change the way in which that sailor sees the world. When physical activity reaches a level of strain and routine that the mind is freed to explore beyond the fulfillment of that action, true subconscious exploration can begin. This mental space can be a dangerous and liberating place. As an artist who engages in endurance based performance works, I can directly relate to this need to explore the raising of the subconscious to a conscious level.


Often the mark of a civilization is determined in the remnants of attempts at challenging and overpowering their surroundings. Cities rise, roads connect, and the course of nature and humanity is altered. Yet somewhere in this struggle nature begins to reclaim what has been taken. Humanity has the tendency to loose focus. The ocean offers a different interaction. We cannot excavate its surface to learn of past crossings. We have begun to search its depths for clues to those that have been claimed by the sea. But for all of our technology we are still at its mercy.

We know of our relationship to the sea from those who have come before us, a last bastion of the oral tradition. What these sailors learn while in close consort with their own mortality is vital for our own understanding of immortality. Of how we remain a part of everything that has come before us while directing today what is to come. Art in some ways is a mirror of our society. I can only hope that the we learn from the image of a duct taped oar about the importance of making it work with what ever you have for the sake of those that will come after you. That beauty can be found in adversity, and adversity can be overcome through the upkeep of the oral tradition.