All Aboard with Ragnar Kjartansson’s Traveling Band of Brass

Remember the swanky boat-party scene in the 1935 film Remember Last Night? It’s okay, none of the characters do either (the film chronicles a group of friends whose hungover memory lapses prevent them from solving a murder). With the film in mind, Iceland’s jack-of-all-trades Ragnar Kjartansson pooled his talents—he’s a painter, sculptor, performance artist, and classical musician, to name a few—to create a sailing installation that will travel back and forth across the canal in Venice’s Arsenale.

On his redesigned 1934 wooden fishing boat—the S.S. Hangover— Kjartansson has assembled a brass sextet to fill the airwaves of the Biennale with tuba, trombone, and horns. Individually, the players will be dropped off at the landing, suddenly playing solo, until picked up again by their traveling band.

At right, see Kjartansson’s sketch of the S.S. Hangover among shots of the exhibition in action, on view four hours daily through November 24th, 2013.

Not enough? Find Kjartansson in our curated sale and bring home a piece of the Biennale.

S.S. Hangover, 2013. Photographs by Lilja Birgisdóttir. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik.