Streams and Mountains                                         

Matsuo Basho (1644-94) did not only develop haiku, but he also wrote one of the most outstanding travel journals of all time, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. The uncertainty of traveling was for Basho a way of leaving his ego behind and opening himself to poetry. Last year, artist Anya Gleizer and poet Pablo Valcarce hiked for three months retracing Basho’s Narrow Road. They travelled through remote mountains, learning on their way from local artists, Zen monks, from their own isolation and from nature.

In a combination of age-old traditions and new technology, performance, video, and painting, the artists explore the themes of Basho´s work, but also the vast distance time and globalization have created between the ancient and modern Japan. Gleizer and Valcarce´s work reflects a search for a stillness that remains unchanged since Basho´s time, in a fast-changing contemporary world.