Journey v/s Arrival
The journey may be the goal, but is the arrival underrated?
Recently in southern Africa I had a sense of déjàvu, while location scouting in an old Toyota, trying to find one particular village of the San people in the Botswana Kalahari Desert. In this part of the world, distances are enormous and the road often rough. My transport alone posed such a challenge that I needed to reconsider the value of arriving. I felt the same thing last year at the opening of the World in a Shell exhibition at the Museumpark in Rotterdam after all the years of preparation!
What exactly does it mean to go location scouting on the other side of the world? This is not the kind of activity, which is usually in one's daily agenda. One should consider it as a specialized task, where you have to do a lot of research before arriving, and the reality is then often quite different than what you expected. For me, this is exciting. It raises my adrenaline level and allows me to get back to the root of things, able to intuitively manage situations, make decisions on the fly and directly become part of the consequences.