The first attempt to establish an English settlement in the new world failed. Roanoke Island in North-Carolina is known as “The Lost Colony”. The first 100 colonists disappeared without any trace. The only clue was the word “Croatoan” carved into a post of the abandoned fort. Croatoan was the name of a nearby island and a local tribe of Native Americans. According to this story the phrase “Gone to Croatan” has become an emblem of “dropping out” of civilization and “returning to” the wilderness.
The exhibition “Gone to Croatan” deals with the topics remembrance and disappearance. The shortfilms of the artist duo Fischli / Weiss or of Bas Jan Ader are examples for this. In “The Right Way” a rat and a bear go hiking in an unspoiled countryside, in “The Fall” a man falls very slow down from a roof. The filmmaker Bas Jan Ader himself vanished in 1975 on a sailboat trip over the Atlantic.
“Gone to Croatan” was first shown at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun / Poland. Now it comes to the “Dortmunder U”, the centre for art and creativity of Dortmund / Germany. The exhibition will open on June 3rd, 2011.
