Many paths lead to Europe. The most dangerous is the sea route. For his work Azimut Raul Walch travelled to Europe’s southern periphery; to the heart of the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our age. Azimut is an attempt to rethink artistic contemporaneity. It’s a presence that neither comments nor judges, but rather expands perspectives, participates and produces. Azimut is political; it is narrative and full of poetry. It doesn’t talk about people, it listens to them.

In the Winter of 2015, Raul Walch travelled to Lesbos. This, the first of several visits, marks the beginning of Azimut. In nautical terms the Arabic word refers to the intended course, or azimuth, of a journey from beginning to end. In navigational terms the north is a reference point. For those who have chosen the route across the sea, the north encompasses both hope and horror. Time and again Walch has explored global migration flows – investigating and deconstructing their materiality.

As Olafur Eliasson’s student at the Institut für Raumexperimente (Institute for Spatial Experimentation), Walch adopted a broad approach to artistic practice. The question as to whether an artistic idea can become a product remains pertinent throughout his work. In Azimut he takes it one step further: can an artistic idea save lives? From discarded tarpaulin he fashioned colourful kites. The temporary architectures of Arrival Cities have long become symbols of instability and uprootedness; in Azimut they are structures of freedom and empowerment. Where there are kites there is humanity. The next step is to turn them into Rescue Kites; lighthouses flying above the water to direct the ships; fluorescent mosaics in the wind that oppose the politics of nationalism. —Drittel Books