From VÆDDEREN’s journal

Newsletter 10

Dato 13.10.2006

The painter and graphic artist Morten Schelde boarded the Vædderen in Nuuk, Greenland, over a month ago. He will be leaving the ship on Sunday, in Cape Town. Morten Schelde has just sent this report on his journey:

13 October 2006

Friday 13 October:  I am sitting in crew’s quarters on board Vædderen. Around me there is a mixture of research project workers and military personnel. All are busy with their computers – surfing, looking at pictures, sending mails or just chatting. Some are finding out what this afternoon's film will be - screened just next door. The weather outside is what I imagine it to be in Denmark, 17 degrees, mild, cloudy and some rain.  Not so African, you might say.  I have been a passenger and artist on board Galathea from Nuuk, via the Azores and Ghana to Cape Town, from whence I will soon fly home. People regularly ask me whether I have found inspiration whilst sailing. I do not know. Inspiration is such a strange thing.  Ideas come from daily practice, like a brick that fits into the system that I have carefully constructed over time. My own slightly autistic system with its own logic which I cannot always understand. My motives are things I already know – not radically new things. What I am looking for is a mood that is instilled by the typical, the mundane. What might be thought of as dull, mundane, unspectacular- in many ways everything that is not presented as 'new'. A ladder at night – a photo of someone – a cabin. A feeling of living life alone, which of course can be self-perpetuating. What it means to be human.

Photograph Morten Schelde

Night on a beach in Ghana.

It is night; we are here on a beach in Ghana, palms swaying overhead, a roaring sea under a full moon. We trudge over the sand and climb the dunes to avoid getting our shoes wet when the waves break on the beach. We look for turtles.  The aim is to fit satellite transmitters to their backs. The beach is looking like a dump with a collection of old shoes, plastic cups, jars, covers and gadgets. Large sea turtles will come in the night to lay their eggs. The tropics: another, ‘unreal’ world. There is no middle class in Ghana, walking dogs on the beach, talking about the local wine shop. Yet I find the same subjects as if I were home in Hundsted: tall trees, the sea, shapes in the dark. When we return to our cars, the fishermen are waiting for us. They seem to be concerned about the stickers on the cars (“look at this – an albatross by the window”) (“Home, where I wanted to go”) and (“no penguins after all”) and most of them look a bit surly. One of the boys we have been with all night on our hunt continues to film and take pictures unperturbed - but I am white, foreign and it would be wrong to just stand there and take shots.  They would be touristy anyway. Photographs can sometimes mean overkill, ownership, even power.

Photograph Morten Schelde

A turtle is fitted out with a satellite transmitter.

We end up sitting at the chief’s farm amongst the locals, whilst our colleagues from the University of Ghana are sorting things out. It’s a good 20 minutes before the mood improves – smiles – and Dr Ahman hands out the newly printed brochures, “Save the sea turtles”.  When everyone has shaken the chief’s hand we can drive out through the wakening town, past women carrying water, goats and children. There are waves and smiles, things are okay now.  The chief has demonstrated his influence. A surge of contentment as we drive back to the harbour.  We are dozing on our seats, as a new day in the real world dawns.

Soon I will be home again.  A British Airways flight from Cape Town awaits me, soon I will be back and my real work begins. To attempt to understand what, why – or at any rate, to formulate something.