Integral to The Athens-Kassel Ride was The Transit of Hermes, a journey across Europe by a Greek Arravani horse which I named ‘Hermes’ after the Greek god of border crossings. The Arravani are a Greek gait horse now in decline with the two remaining herds in Greece and Germany. Hermes was sourced in the Arkadian mountains of the Peloponnese in consultation and collaboration with local Veterinarian, Konstantinos Kourmpellis. Kourmpellis stabled Hermes and organized the inaugural ‘Arravani Festival of Arkadia’ in the small mountain village of Prastos (1 April 2017). The festival promoted the Arravani with over 50 horses and riders from across the region, and also included participants from Arravani societies in Germany. The mountain village festival was attended by 500 members of the public and celebrated the departure of the Greek horse ‘Hermes’ as he embarked upon his journey from the Arkadian mountains to Athens to begin his part in the The Athens-Kassel Ride. The festival included presentations by Kourmpellis, van der Gugten and myself.
The Athens-Kassel Ride: The Transit of Hermes as cover story of documenta 14 edition of ZEIT Magazine, 8 June with article Tim Ackerman. Zeit Magazine has a circulation of 2 million and an estimated readership of 4 million throughout the EU. It was also featured on CNN online with an article / interview by Nicholas Glass.

Criollo and The Athens-Kassel Ride: The Transit of Hermes developed as part of the ongoing Envoy series of site-specific interventions (see: An Envoy Reader, 2014). The projects were inspired by Tschiffely’s Ride, a 10,000 mile journey from Buenos Aires to New York (1925-1928) by Swiss-Argentine, Aimé Félix Tschiffely on two Argentine criollo horses. The projects also responded to question of the animal and ‘the open’ in the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke, Martin Heidegger and Giorgio Agamben. Criollo also developed in response to critical theories of creolité and creolization (Édouard Glissant, Stuart Hall), the philosophy of ‘mingled bodies’ (Michel Serres), ‘becoming-animal’ (Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari), Jacques Derrida’s notion of ‘animalseance’ and John Berger’s 1980 essay ‘Why Look at Animals?’ as well as more recent political and biopolitical theories of animal-human relations (Brian Massumi, Cary Wolfe, Ron Broglio). The Athens-Kassel Ride also engaged with the concepts of the border (Etienne Balibar), ‘posse’ (Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri), ‘companion species’ (Donna Haraway) and ‘trans-species solidarity’ (Rosi Braidotti). The Transit of Hermes also drew reference to the thought of Michel Serres, in which the mythical figure of Hermes as messenger of the gods is a key reference throughout his œuvre, not least Serres’ multi-volume work Hermes I-V, including his work on parasites, and the critical writings of Karl Kerényi, Norman O. Brown and Lewis Hyde.

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