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SAILED MESSAGE BOOTSCHAFT artproject
from the Artist Kai Georg Wujanz - Germany
Sent from the sailing-yacht "Kairen"
North Sea, Position 57 ° 25 ' 28 '' N / 03 ° 44 ' 23 '' E, 07. July 2010
10.30 UTC
Dear lucky and unknown recipient,
you just received a message which is part of an artproject - delivered by a small sailing-boat, watered in the middle of the North Sea.
My name is Kai Georg Wujanz and I am on board of the sailing yacht "Kairen", bound for the Shetland Isles.
The idea is very simple. I created a message in opposite to our fast global life, including all kinds of quick communications we are used to. And - I am really not sure, if my message will have landfall someday and where it will be? And you - are you male, female, a child, a fisherman, a granny on a seaside-walk with your grandchild? Who will hold the boat in his hands?
I think, that we have unlearned to wait! We are sending an SMS or emails and we want to have response. Immediately! We have unlearned to think about the possibility of having an answer. We require the answer! Is the addressee in the mood to answer? Is he reading our message at once or later, while having time with a cup of tea? We have unlearned to think in pictures, unlearned to dream while our message is on the way. We blog every nonsense at the internet, sentence for sentence. We can agree or disagree in high-speed-time, there is no really need of thinking about what we are writing, because we can explain ourselves in every new mail a bit more and a bit better. It's like having a "real" conversation. Have you ever seen the handwriting of your emailpartner? We called him "ballpen" before the internet. Do you remember?
So while I am sitting here on deck of "Kairen" watching this little sailing-boat beating up the waves and the wind to you, I am imagining his way, thinking about what I could have told you more... My eyes follow these small blue and red sails as long as they can. My message is just an idea of being in contact to someone with all my senses and I am training myself to wait patiently for some response.
The idea of sailing a message from a sailing-boat at sea to shore is not new. This is also a hommage to the french sailor Bernard Moitessier, who did the same in 1968/1969 with his boat "Joshua". The "Sunday Times" invited sailors for a singlehanded round the world race. Moitessier was in the lead when he decided, on the way home at Cape of God Hope, not to continue, to renounce the prize and the publicity. He sailed back to the Indian Ocean, passed Australia and sent a message in a small sailing boat. Robin Knox-Johnston finished the race as the winner. Moitessier did the longest singlehanded sailed nonstop circumnavigation a man ever made: One and a half time around the world.
Since my childhood I grew up with sailing boats and the legend of Bernard Moitessier. The sailing yacht "Kairen", carrying my father and me right now over the North Sea is the same type of boat like Moitessiers "Joshua", meanwhile 34 years old and she also made her circumnavigation through the world-oceans in the 90th.
For my work as an artist, water is an important medium, on paper, on canvas or even for a message-project like this one. Sailing this message to you is also a sort of "coming home", going back to my roots, when I was a small boy building boats to play with, reading Moitessier and I had no imagination of being at sea for several weeks, having the opulence of time. Time for being just myself on board, thinking about everything I want to. This project is somehow a part of my biography - I push myself over the finish-line. This is my first "Sailed Message", but I know I will continue, whenever I will be at the seaside or on the ocean.
Please take a photo from you, holding the boat in your hands. Tell me the day, time and location, where you found the boat with my message. Send me a letter, a SMS, an email or call me up. Keep the boat, make it a present to your children or grandchildren. If you like, write your own message, put it in the boat and make it watertight again. Send it back over the North Sea to someone else. Maybe you make a BBQ with friends and an art-happening when you push the boat back in the water.
Thank you for reading the message and I hope you are joining the artproject SAILED MESSAGE!
Kai Georg Wujanz
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