MARIA VEITS

OFF TO SPACE: COUNTERNARRATING THE COSMOS

Today’s environmental, political, and economic crisis, alongside the anxiousness about tomorrow and cross-planetary colonial ambitions, instigate a new spiral turn of the space race that now includes both states and private corporations fighting for limited lunar resources. Even though the contemporary world is far from being dual (in the context of failing democracy, growing nationalism, and an overall political throwback revisiting the politics of the Cold War era), reassessing the current moment of confusion and political apathy while also contemplating potentialities of the future(s) in view of the developing totalitarian agenda in former socialist states and beyond could be helpful.

The Soviet history of space exploration always served as a powerful tool for propaganda and has been actively used by the state to form a national identity. The formal historical narrative about space, as well as the policy of choosing heroes who would embody the space achievements of the USSR, were constructed in accordance with current ideological discourse. Yiddish Cosmos by Yevgeniy Fiks offers an alternative, subaltern look at the Soviet space conquest from the perspective of Soviet Jewish experience. The project creates a futuristic narrative where the ideas of technological development merge with the principles of Yiddish culture and reinterpretation of the figure of a Soviet refusenik (a term marking Soviet Jews who were denied the right to emigrate from the USSR) and the struggle for liberty of movement in the years of state antisemitism. Yiddish Cosmos draws from the stories of three people. Panarchist Volf Gordin was a theorist of the space universal language AO, a utopian linguistic project that arose on the wave of post-revolutionary enthusiasm of the 1920s, but never received development. Ari Sternfeld, who came to the USSR from Poland and was one of the founding fathers of the Soviet cosmonautics and coined the term, was prohibited to work officially as a space scientist in 1937 and never gained reputation in the USSR. The cosmonaut Boris Volynov was the first Halachic Jew in space in 1969, who could have been the first man in space had it not been for his Jewish origin.

Similarly, space was much less accessible for people of colour in the US as it was closed for representatives of certain nationalities in the USSR, and NASA was harshly criticised by Black communities for its lack of diversity and the controversial resignation of Ed Dwight, a Black astronaut a few years before the moon landing. Envisioning tools needed to create liberating Afro-future(s) is at the core of the project Black Space Agency of the artist duo from Philadelphia Black Quantum Futurism. The project, initially created with and for communities in Philadelphia, addressed issues of affordable and fair housing, displacement/space/land grabs, redlining, eminent domain, and gentrification through the lens of Afrofuturism, oral histories/futures, and Black spatial-temporal autonomy. As a point of departure, Black Quantum Futurism use the resistance of the Black Community in North Philly during the 1960s against the space race. Black Space Agency focuses on the story of Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, a civil rights leader and minister at Philadelphia’s Zion Baptist Church, who established Progress Aerospace Enterprises (PAE), one of the first Black-owned aerospace companies.

The gender lens for discussing space exploration appears in Zero Gravity—Nostalgia for Earth by Andréa Stanislav. For years, the dominating perspective on space exploration has been based on the achievements of men, while the legacy of female astronauts and researchers and the impact it has had on the environmental, political, and social climate in historical perspective and contemporary context has been diminished and mostly known through the first woman in space Valentina Tereshkova. While mining the controversial history of female contributions throughout space race in the 20th century, Stanislav undertook research on space exploration at the Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics, where she explored the zero gravity designs of the Soyuz, MIR spacecraft, and International Space Station by the Soviet Space Program architect Galina Balashova. The video location setting is a space capsule orbiting Mars, partially shot in actual Soyuz capsules designed in the 1970s by Balashova, whose name became widely known only in 2000 after the first exhibition of her works in Moscow.

Masha Godovannaya touches upon the first explorers of space and the lives that were sacrificed in the early stages of space research from the perspective of animal rights. Laika was the first dog which was successfully sent to the Earth’s orbit by the Russians. One of the many Soviet space-dogs, the first cosmonauts, who paid with their lives for men’s conquering space. The film Laika. The Last Flight is a letter from the dead dog. Her haunted spirit re-tells the story of her heroic deeds and martyrdom. The letter is not a call for a revenge or restitution, but rather a document of a life, one of many lives that have been considered “disposable” and “killable” by the well-known human strategies of conquest and domination.

Driant Zeneli addresses the aftermath of the toxic communist legacy in Albania and speculates about the future after an environmental catastrophe in his video work It would not be possible to leave the planet Earth unless gravity existed. In the center of the work is the Metalurgjiku plant built by the Chinese in the 1960-1970s. The city of Elbasan, where the plant was located, had become a heavily polluted city. Diseases, cancer, genetic mutations, and intoxicated air have often made the headlines in Albanian media since the early 1990s. In Zeneli’s video, Metalurgjiku looks like an industrial archaeological site or a futuristic Sci-Fi city after an apocalypse, where the protagonist, Mario, is looking for the possibility to escape to the outer space from the industrial and political ruins of a utopian society.

Aspirations and dreams about space are central to the short film by Axel Strasсhnoy, who, narrating the story of the Finnish Astronautical Society, explores Finnish futurism and the futuristic ambitions of the post-war Finland. Geographically and politically, Finland has always been feeling the pressure both from the East and the West and this tension still remains especially after 2014 and the wave of US and EU sanctions on Russia. The Society started to develop the Finnish Space Program in 1959, a year after NASA. Having become a member of the society, Strasсhnoy observes the contemporary routine and rituals of rocket models launching in which he also occasionally participates. The film documenting these rituals and the life of the Finnish Astronautical Society today marks its 60th anniversary since it was founded by enthusiastic schoolboys who, inspired by the space race, set out to build the country’s first rocket. 

OFF TO SPACE: COUNTERNARRATING THE COSMOS

Black Quantum Futurism, Masha Godovannaya, Yevgeniy Fiks, Andréa Stanislav, Axel Straschnoy, Driant Zeneli

Curator: Maria Veits

Israeli Center for Digital Art, 4 Ha'Amoraim Street, Holon, Israel

February 22 - May 23, 2020

“Off to Space: Countenarrating the Cosmos” brings together works by six international artists and collectives that integrate underrepresented narratives and practices of post-memory into contemporary political contexts and processes. The platform for such excavation of difficult knowledge, repressed memories, and forgotten scenarios of the already cancelled future is space exploration strategies that started in the 20th century as attempts to widen geopolitical influence, accumulate power, and make utopias possible.

Presenting multiple narratives about space exploration and displaying how affected it has always been by ruling ideologies, political visions, and dominant social lenses, the OFF TO SPACE: COUNTERNARRATING THE COSMOS exhibition becomes a platform for discovering a variety of counter-futurisms and temporalities. In doing so, it offers artistic ways of representing displaced stories and reclaiming the past and the future. By addressing events set in the past, the artists reflect upon current issues including growing antisemitism and new strategies of exile, feminist movements, economic segregation, and growing inequality. Showing space exploration from positions of ethnic minorities, women, animals, small communities, and dependent economies, the exhibited works disclose the cost of technological development and progress that largely contributed to contemporary environmental and political cataclysm, but that was never a part of the official spacial discourse cherished by governments as a symbol of national power. By including counter-histories and counter-futurisms in the realm of shared public knowledge, the artists bring back displaced identities and articulate cases of voice dispossession thus bringing historical justice to silenced communities and individuals. 

Image Captions:

1. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos". Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view. Photo: Shir Comay

2. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos". Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view. Photo: Shir Comay

3. Yevegniy Fiks, Yiddish Cosmos, 2017. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos".  Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view.  Photo: Shir Comay

4. Yevegniy Fiks, Yiddish Cosmos, 2017. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos".  Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view.  Photo: Shir Comay

5. Yevegniy Fiks, Yiddish Cosmos, 2017. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos".  Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view.  Photo: Shir Comay

6. Yevegniy Fiks, Yiddish Cosmos, 2017. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos".  Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view.  Photo: Shir Comay

7. Yevegniy Fiks, Yiddish Cosmos, 2017. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos".  Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view.  Photo: Shir Comay

8. Black Quantum Futurism, Black Space Agency, 2018. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos".  Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view.  Photo: Shir Comay

9. Black Quantum Futurism, Black Space Agency, 2018. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos".  Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view.  Photo: Shir Comay

10. Andréa Stanislav, Zero Gravity - Nostalgia for Earth, 2020. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos".  Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view.  Photo: Shir Comay

11. Axel Straschnoy, Finnish Astronautical Society, 2019. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos".  Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view.  Photo: Shir Comay

12. Axel Straschnoy, Finnish Astronautical Society, 2019. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos".  Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view.  Photo: Shir Comay

13. Driant Zeneli, It Would Not Be Possible to Leave the Planet Earth Unless Gravity Existed, 2017. "Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos".  Curator: Maria Veits. Israeli Center for Digital Art, 2020. Installation view.  Photo: Shir Comay