JORDAN RATHUS
Fernweh (Farsickness)
May 1 - 31, 2014
Reception: Thursday May 1 from 6:00pm to 9:00pm
THE WORK
Jordan Rathus brought from New York to Portland mementos from her travels to Panama and the Arctic Circle. Acting as both tourist and faux-documentarian, she created absurdist travelogue videos that challenge false exoticism and the tourism industry's infrastructure of mutual exploitation. Her fresh, humor-filled videos and photographic works take the familiar and render it perverse. No Comment was filmed in Finnish Lapland, nestled deep within the Arctic Circle, and the footage for Based on, If Any was shot in the tropical rainforests lining the Panama Canal. Rathus travels to these distinct corners of the globe to chronicle her "prefabricated adventures" while "performing the pervasive, hybridized role of tourist-documentarian."