Hogshead 733

Hogshead 733 by Maxime Berthou and Mark Požlep is an artistic sailing mission about various transformations. In the first place the transformation of an old sailing ship called Soutien de Famille made of oak into two large whiskey barrels of 250 litres each – so-called hogshead, then the transformation of the maturation of necessary ingredients into whiskey itself, and finally, the transformation that the artists experienced while sailing for a month from the shipyard Trebeurden in Brittany to the whiskey distillery Bunnahabhain in Scotland.

Combining adventure with art, Bertou and Požlep have created an exceptional interdisciplinary project that balances between film and visual contemporary art. The Hogshead 733 exhibition takes us back to the times of traditional craftsmanship that are often considered extinct in our technocratic age, but also to the times of colonialism, where the presented visuals evoke scenes of Dutch seascapes of the Golden Age. Along with the word “tradition”, it should be noted that the artists emphasize the connections of the modern age of consumerism with the past, where we may simply remember Orwell’s 1984 and understand that the past is even more important than the future because it is not easy to monitor and control a man who knows the past.

Excerpt from the text: Neva Lukić