Alptekin initiated the Sea Elephant Travel Agency as a "floating laboratory" that followed the travels of Jules Verne's stubborn tobacco merchant, Kéraban, around the coast of the Black Sea. Alptekin intended to gather artists, curators, musicians, architects, historians and scientists to board a boat leaving from Istanbul, following the route of Kéraban and anchoring back in Istanbul again after making a full circle around the Black Sea, stopping at ports of Varna, Constanta, Odessa, Sevastopol, Yalta, Rostov, Novossibirsk, Sochi, Batumi, Trabzon and Sinop. It was planned for the boat to take off in August 2003, and sail for two months. Unfortunately, the project was never realized.
Finding our way from Antwerp to Istanbul through Jules Verne is part of Recordings for the Birds (RFB), a collection of stories gathered during Seed Journey which serves as a means of documentation – one that mirrors the slowness of our wind-powered vessel and the long march of domestication of plants through trial and error, not to mention chance, whereby certain varieties became reliable foodstuff. RFB is a framework reliant upon chance, improvisation and engagement with strangers encountered along the journey. It is a telling of a story through other stories.
1 — "We don't need museums to conserve varieties, what we want is to plant them," a message from farmer, Johan Sward in Oslo.
3 — Excerpt from Kéraban the Inflexible, by Jules Verne.
4 — Another excerpt from Kéraban the Inflexible. This lesser known Verne story. Reminds me of Francis Alys' Loop.