The Athens-Kassel Ride: The Transit of Hermes (d14)

The Athens-Kassel Ride—a mobile, participatory, human-equine ensemble performed over 100 days—is a 3000 km equestrian long ride across Europe linking the two cities of documenta 14. Inspired by Tschiffely’s journey, The Athens-Kassel Ride gestures toward a biopolitics of “whatever being”—coming communities of “whatever race, nationality or creed.” And this community also embraces animals, in this case horses, as “companion species.” The posse of four long riders who undertake the journey (Tina Boche, Peter van der Gugten, Zsolt Szabo, and David Wewetzer) ride according to the Charter of Reken, which advances the “freedom to travel the world with horses” and the conservation of “historical postal and trade routes” as well as the right “to travel these as in old times, crossing today’s state borders.” Departing from Athens on Sunday April 9, 2017, they make their way northwards on a route which traces a “vagabond trail” through Greece, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, and Germany, crossing Schengen and non-Schengen zone countries, thus drawing a “diagonal” across Europe. The long riders used a variety of breeds for the journey: Criollo, Haflinger, Kabardin, and Karabakh. They are accompanied by a six-year-old Arravani stallion named Hermes. Arravani are a Greek “gait” horse breed known for their elegance and endurance. Sadly, the number of Arravani has been in decline recently, with the last remaining herds found in Greece and Germany. Hermes is from the Arcadian mountains of the Peloponnese and is named after the Greek god of commerce and theft, music and border crossings. The mythical Hermes is also emissary and messenger of the Gods and a central figure in the thought of Michel Serres, whose writings (along with those of Giorgio Agamben, Étienne Balibar, John Berger, Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, and Rainer Maria Rilke) have travelled alongside the development of The Athens-Kassel Ride. In his journey between Athens and Kassel, Hermes is not only in transit between Greece and Germany—traversing a line which traces the historical and contemporary tensions of Europe—but between myth and materiality, economics and politics, philosophy and action, humans and animals. Hermes, then, is a courier, an intermediary, an animal envoy, an angel messenger. But the destination of his message (whatever it may be) is not Kassel. Neither is Athens its point of departure. It is in the relay, in the coexistence of companions: the community of riders and horses who, through the project of the ride, embody “the movement that transports… not toward another thing or another place, but towards its own taking place.” The Athens-Kassel Ride was supported by documents 14, Creative Scotland, GSA and a number of equestrian sponsors and was ethically approved by the VfD, the second largest equestrian organisation in Germany