Bicycle
Rainer Ganahl | USA/Austria | 2003 | video installation
“The bicycle is not only my unique vehicle of transportation
but also my urban eyeglass – some extension of my visual and
acoustic organs. As such it is a real social urban interface. When
working with my dreams over an 8 month period I realized with surprise
that I was dreaming constantly of my bicycle in relationship to
the apprehension of my world. I'm a bicycle rider since early childhood.
My first birthday present I remember was a bicycle. I have never
stayed in a place for long without a bicycle, including in Tokyo
where I was harassed daily by the police for riding a bicycle (I
was considered a bicycle thief). Today, 10/23/03, I just had this
dream about me bicycling against a crowd of Trachten-wearing people.
Trachten are the traditional European clothes, associated with traditionalism,
'good old times' and right-wing politics. During the dream I was
bicycling in the same style like in Tirana against the crowds of
Trachten wearing lines of people. The police were chasing me and
people tried to catch me. The bicycle is really - next to the computer
and the radio - my most important instrument for making it through
my life” – (Rainer Ganahl).
Rainer Ganahl is an Austrian/American artist based in New York
City. Since 1990 he has exhibited widely in the USA, Japan and Europe.
In 1999 he exhibited in the Austrian Pavillion at the 48th Venice
Biennale. Ganahl exhibited Basic Canadian at Paul Petro Contemporary
Art in 2000. Photographs from Ganahl’s Seminar/Lecture series
appeared in the group exhibit Lecture Notes at the Mount St Vincent
University Art Gallery in Halifax in 2003. For more information
on his work visit www.ganahl.info.
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