SEARCHING
200 Lonely Planets, plastic bags, cards, world map, twice 4 x 2.2 meter, 2003.

Searching is an installation built in a former atomic bomb shelter.
If one were really locked in this shelter the only way out is the escape one’s thoughts make to far away places. On one of the walls in the shelter I placed a map of the world. On the opposite wall there are Lonely Planet travel guides that have been returned by travelers. If one were to be stuck in the shelter the guides refer to a world that has become physically unreachable.
The travel guides would transform in combination with the dreams of the people about the places they never visited on our ‘lonely planet.’ They would become fantasy stories.
This mind experiment of a non-existing situation was the start of a realization that this extreme situation is not needed, because many people take their own freedom of movement away from themselves literally and figuratively. With Searching I wanted to stimulate people to travel and to search for new spaces, experiences, stories and worlds. The condition was that people would take the guide to the place of it’s destination, write experiences in the guide and document the travel by collecting memorabilia. When the guides came back they were be posted on the wall in the shelter.