Articles

Art in Space; Public Art in an Expanding World
by: Dr.Annie Gérin, Université du Québec à Montréal

The Earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1896

Stephen Hawking created a stir when he commented on the post September eleven biological warfare threat in the London Daily Telegraph: “I don’t think that the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space.” (October 16, 2001) While the remark about the need to expand human usable space was a reaction to political and ecological events, it also conjures up ethical questions about ownership of space and about use of shared spaces in general, questions often put forward by contemporary public artists.

The constant flow of infrared radiations and chemical emissions streaming from Earth’s industrialised countries to outer space seems to indicate that humans already consider the cosmos as an extension of their terrestrial spaces. Indeed, much before the Earth’s richest countries had claimed a presence in space with satellites and occasional forays into deep space, it was already colonized by artistic, cultural and scientific discourses. Science fiction, for example, carved the profile of desirable worlds where humans would eventually travel. Even before Armstrong slowly dropped onto the Moon, the rock was the legacy of terrestrial children who were told they would grow to explore it. And in spite of rivalries between superpowers to first conquer new worlds, as the Earth’s backyard, the cosmos has long been considered a shared space and, in a way, a public space. Yet, this galactic space apparently differs from other public spaces; it is fluid, unlimited by geopolitical boundaries and, according to Big Bang theories, ever-expanding.

This notion of a limitless space, swirling in every direction towards infinity, is not entirely foreign to cultural or art discourses interested in the problem of public art and public spaces. Since the seminal writings by Henri Lefebvre on The Production of Space, we understand that public art/spaces have an influence rippling out indeterminately (in terms of phenomenology, cumulative meanings, cultural influences in a nomadic world, etc.) in a way that defies man-made borders and rational-historical time. In spite of the structure of the modern city, where urban grids and street names conspire to contain cultural production, shared spaces constantly disseminates their meanings and forms, while themselves being endlessly transformed by their changing environment and users.

David Suzuki, recently discussing the Kyoto Protocol, paralleled this understanding of public spaces--equally applicable to alleged natural spaces. Suzuki used the metaphor of a river flowing through different principalities to describe the challenging use of shared spaces and resources. A river, he explained, can indefinitely irrigate and nourish lands owned by different interests. But because of its fluid, roaming nature, upstream abuse of the resource can contaminate the current for all other discrete users, and even infect faraway lands and the stock grazing on them. Suzuki conceives of the spaces surrounding the Earth in such a way. Accordingly, outside of a certain ethic of collaboration and conservation, shared natural or cultural spaces on Earth or beyond could be terminally compromised.

So what if, pointing specifically to this pressing issue, one were to devise a work of public art, as a paradigmatic object, that would flow down a river, crossing the boundaries of states? What if someone were to propel an aesthetic object into space, crossing layers of atmosphere to orbit the Earth over oceans and continents? This idea is not as far-fetched as it seems; artists are waiting in the wings to examine the overall significance of our expansion into space. Indeed, the European Space Agency (ESA) will soon drive into the cosmos a painting by Damian Hirst, on the space ship Beagle 2 destined to Mars in 2003. Aside from its aesthetic qualities (the work consists of a number of coloured dots located at the nodes of an invisible grid), the painting will be used to calibrate the cameras and set the spectrometers on the Mars Express rover. Beagle 2 will therefore act as the first intergalactic public art display site, images of its content and surroundings presumably sent electronically for all Earthlings to examine on the six o’clock news. The experimental context framing the art object will then deliver its own set of contingencies, some of them unpredictable, and allow various lay and specialized publics to reflect on the work as well as the unusual site for aesthetic inquiry.

At first glance, ESA’s interest in art seems somewhat gimmicky. It reveals, however, that space exploration is not simply driven by technology. Indeed, while the liberal arts and fine arts communities are overwhelmingly sceptic towards the need for space expansion, anthropologist Ben Finney and space psychologist Philip Harris, among others, say that space exploration corresponds more to deep-seated philosophical, psychological and social needs than the scientific and military imperatives that serve to justify the budgets. It has also already had irrevocable effects on how humans view their world; Harris explains that, even in the short term, space exploration has awakened humans to a new environmental ethos, largely as a result of seeing our small planet suspended in the apparently lifeless vacuum of space. As a result of this arousing of a cultural and philosophical interest, the ESA will surely not be the only organisation sending cultural production into space as public art.

Canadian public artist John Noestheden hopes to be one of the first to take advantage of the International Space Station (ISS)’s plan to generate revenues through their Commercial Utilization Programme, creating opportunities for space tourism and space experimentation for a fee (the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) plans to dedicate 50% of its share of the orbital laboratory to commercial experiments, along the criteria outlined in their brochure Space for Rent). Noestheden has fashioned into a prototype entitled Spacepiece an object that embodies humanity’s age-old fascination with heavenly bodies and the pragmatic considerations linked to building art destined for public use. He hopes that his hand crafted three-dimensional polygon, made of shimmering T-6 aluminium and protected with high impact rubber bumpers, will be taken on board of the ISS, and placed into orbit by the Station’s robotic arm or thrown toward the moon by an astronaut during a space walk. The highly polished, obsessively regular geometrical object (its exact form, dimensions and mass will be defined in relation to the guidelines and parameters set forth by the CSA, if it accepts the art experiment) will then exist among space debris as an intentionally aesthetic object. Living out its unpredictable life expectancy as a satellite, it will eventually deliver a fraction of a second of light as a shooting star when it is wrenched out of orbit by collision with other debris or by natural forces. The ephemeral work of public art will then disappear into infinity, most likely without encountering any accidental audiences.
At the moment of writing, Noestheden is in the initial stages of the SPACEPIECE project and, because of the overwhelming bureaucratic nature of such a venture, its outcome might remain purely conceptual. But whether or not astronauts take the polygon along for a space walk, the work already provocatively interrogates the colonization of (public) space by the human imagination.

Dr.Annie Gérin
Université du Québec à Montréal