INTERVENTIONS was conceived under the influence of war in Europe when NATO decided to intervene in the conflict in the Balkan in 1999. I was watching news bulletins on TV most nights and witnessed both the ethnic cleansing by Milosevic' troops and the bombing by air by NATO forces. In the guise of a landscape painter (plein air) I began walking through Europe putting myself in the picture as a frontman; my own subjective broadcaster, interpreter and adventurer. I wanted to challenge the artist's social function and explore people's perception of art and its possibilities of creating a dialogue for peace. My idiosyncratic performance during 78 days across the European landscape is an inquiry into distance - the journey itself. It is the existence of the journey, and not the essence of the destination. Kosovo is not the subject of my work but a mere stop to my journey. My position is akin to that of a passer-by constantly trying to situate himself in a moving environment. Each intervention is another fragment of the story that is being invented and a challenge to the narrative and economic structure of Western representation.
INTERVENTIONS, an installation of photography, video, sound and found objects was first exhibited at Platformen, Museet for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark 4 March – 24 April 2000.
INTERVENTIONS at Street Photography 1917-2017 - A Tribute to Everyday Life, Øksnehallen, Copenhagen 28 June – 1 August 2017
The installation of photography, video, sound and found objects explore the notion of communication, not only as a visual language, but communication as a set of relationships between art and life, war and peace, spectator and creator, memory and language. Thinking it as a long-distance phone call - trying to make sense of the other receiver's non-sense, replacing the phone with organic, singular activity - the installation is in effect a documentation of a man alone walking through Europe to Kosovo. The walk is not to make sense out of something seemingly senseless. French contemporary thinker, Jean-Luc Nancy, has already written that the Sense of the World has come to an end. What remain after or before the 'event' are marks of human subjectivity. We are always already too late for any event, even if we might see it or even experience it. It is impossible to overcome distance by speaking, by writing or by making art. What is left are fragments; visual souvenirs captured like postcards that are too late, recorded after or before the event. Postcards, that do not inform us about an essence, but a mere existence.
Read more here in an in-depth Q&A on Colin Pantal's Blog ‘Walking Across Europe with a Trolley’, 27 January 2014