Space Adaptation Syndrome / 09
Space Adaptation Syndrome refers to a blue glow, also called the “Blue Tcherenkov” (named after the scientist), that can be observed when a charged particle passes at a greater speed than the speed of light.
This blue often correlates with narratives recounted by cosmonauts, who suffered from headaches and malaise, a phenomenon called “space sickness”.
Tereshkova, first woman in space, suffered from strong hysterical state accompanied by several physical pains.
However, while it is said that this blue glow may be responsible for several of those syndromes, it is almost impossible to locate the exact blue tone. Here, in amateur manner, this blue is been searched for, through the replication of possibilities within a small slide viewer.
Die Bedeutendsten Frauen / 08
Based on the East-German Encyclopaedia “Die Frau”, the artist started investigating the encyclopaedia through the tools of translation, replica and re-enactment.
The produced works create a rhyzomatic structure for contemporary reflection on the encyclopaedia as a pedagogical and political instrument for the socialist doctrine.
In the work “die Bedeutendsten Frauen” Hurth chose to replicate, on 1:1 scale, pictures of the historically most important women as seen between the period 1950-1974. Through this act of replication (while omitting all texts or additional information about the portraits) the pictures become decontextualised from primary thought, even though the gesture and pose of the women clearly indicate their relevance within an informative context. If some women are clearly recognised, most of them though speak about representational shifts.
Tereschkova, 28.4 N 144.3E, 31.0
/ 08
Kleine Enzyklopädie, Die Frau
On the introductory page of the 1963 edition of the encyclopaedia “Die Frau”, the first woman in space is represented in both military and civil contexts. Valentina Tereshkova, Russian cosmonaut, became a symbol often used for propaganda purposes, for the promotion of women as building elements
of socialist society and its victories.
Through the tools of reproduction, the artist creates a representative memorial for both fictional and biographical narratives on Tereshokova, using historical and contemporary sources, and additionally by communicating the shifts in information from one edition of the encyclopedia to another.
Die erste Frau im Kosmos / 09
This series of drawings is based again on Valentina Tereshkova, looking at the medial diffusion of Tereshkova’s life on the Internet, retracing both biographical and fictional elements through the wealth of visual information available online.
The drawings are generated through working directly onto ink-jet-printed images taken from the Internet, forming an arc between the ‘ready-made’ image and the artist’s creative agency.
Sources:
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// to see more, click on images //
Sketch for Conditioning (cf. Pavlov)/ 08
Ivan Pavlov has been cited without context in the chapter “good behaviour” of the encyclopaedia “Die Frau”, about basic etiquette for dining that should assure the salubriousness of a meal. Nevertheless, this scientific research on the physiology of digestion was originally gathered through the study of salivating dogs.
The cited text from the encyclopaedia is brought into parallel with replica images and objects from experiments on “Pavlov’s dogs”.
on-going Archive / 04-present
Through the collection of found objects, photographs, artefacts and sound, organisational mechanisms are questioned. Notions of collective and cultural memories are engaged into a dialogue between the viewer and his/her own personal memory gap.
The artist moves from the role of an archivist to historian, melting auto-biographical elements into a more general collective history.
Ground Tactical Force / 09-10
Central to my current research is a youtube version of the film Woman in the Moon (Frau im Mond, directed by Fritz Lang, 1929). As a result of the low-quality version of the film available on the Internet – itself based upon a partially restored reprint from the 1950s –, many details and narrative elements are lost. Apart from the particular aesthetics of the Internet version of the film, I am interested in looking at two contextual elements – the first relating to popular culture (the first use in the film of the ‘rocket launch countdown’), the second of biographical interest (the film’s title is derived from the tense relations between Lang, his wife and his mistress). I am interested in the sense of romantic and melodramatic within modern technology fantasy, and the sense of historiography behind the fictional materiality of motion.
Simulated Artefact / 09
Reconstruction of a collectible artefact, former propaganda booklet about Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space), as described in an eBay advertisement from eBay Singapore. This work continue to investigate discussed biographies as well as reflecting on both contemporary and traditional research media (archive, the internet,youtube, twitter).
Chaïka / 09
In this work, screen captures of youtube films are visually reconstructed and re-told through the re-pictorialisation of moving images into drawings.
The use of gathered and collated narratives, in combination with methodologies used by historians (for instance, the use of the replica or of the archive), proposes this strategy of reconstruction as being a kind of semantic storage. A specific vocabulary is created by the artist, reflecting on the official and the unofficial, on the objective and the subjective, on the communicative and on cultural memory, and what has been lost in the shift between these entities.
In this arena, the artwork becomes a container of quotations; author and source, hidden or revealed, can be quoted in non-hierarchical manners, joining disparate pieces of differing memories. It becomes historical reconstruction; an act of transcription that is also an act of generation.
OFO & Found Text / 09
2- and 3-dimensional work focusing on the official narrative of first woman in space and the contradicting unofficial narratives.
The found text is decontextualised, from its original context and marks the absurdity and the construction of fictions in parallel to other experiments that based cultural and political history with the framework of the space race.
A downloaded PDF of a NASA-Press Kit about the first frog sent to space, 1968 is reproduced in analogue manner onto microfiche format, linked to the discussed and obscured biography and propaganda figure of V. Tereshkova.
the first night I was in space, when I was drifting off to sleep
Documentation of the solo exhibition curated by Anne Fäser, Scotty Enterprises, Berlin, August 2009
Partie lexicale du manuel pour le cours de russe / 09
Lexicon for a Russian language course, for use only by National People’s Army Officers (GDR). Object in display frame, with accompanying translation from German to French.
The original lexicon is a modern relic and has totally lost its sense and practical use due to greater historical changes. Here, the German listing of words are translated into French, creating a further translated copy of the original.
The list of terms, words or sentences experience semantic shifts, while recreating through continuous reading of the lists, new assemblages of thoughts.
drawing (inclusive picture of all possibilities) / 10
Translation of a diagram of Herbert Bayer’s 1937 “Fundamentals of Exhibition Design” into a physical 3-dimensional structure.
While the original diagram analytically shows the different viewing perspectives of the viewer in the context of the exhibition, it becomes a sketch for a spatial framework model of an exhibition, reflects an a progressive spectatorship and Bayer’s three fundamental notions: function, material and production.
The sculpture becomes an aesthetic object, that refers to progress, modernism and science with a viewing platform that suggests an undefined use.
Walter (James Redfern) Turner / 10
Visual Essay based on fictional and biographical narratives: the fictional biography of Walt Turner focused in the artefact of the visiting card seen in F. Lang’s film “Frau im Mond”, replicated and photographed in the same way it can be seen a few second long; and a re-edited textual narrative on the author of the script of the same film, and her glorious death, as depicted on the blog of an amateur historian.
failed suprematist futures / 10
/The identification number N2371N.
And an American flag.
The plane hit the window of a possible
office building, even though it is not recognisable in what floor the plane crashed.
The plane is cut in half, the tail hanging from the building, in the potentiality of it detaching itself from the nose.
This image has been broadcasted around the world in the morning, somehow
bitterly re-enacting the events in New York that took place only four months before.
The teenager on board who stole the plane has been killed by the impact.
The office room got damaged.
The victim was 15 and later the mediaexplained his difficult past, due to the side
effects of medication he took against
severe acne.
Another image.
The 19 year old in his red suit and big glasses, lying against his plane, smoking a cigarette.
In the well-known image, one meter to his right stands a circle of five people.
One of them wears a Russian police uniform.
They are not apprehending the young pilot but obviously deliberating on his fate.
He is now a professional poker player.
More recently Adam Dylan Leon stole a plane identical to the one that landed in Moscow.
From somewhere in Canada, he flew over the border of the United States of America, in the hope of being shot dead.
He is now in prison.
covering / 10
// Though first constructed out of spruce and linen, he first named his machine Silverwing.
It was in 1911 and his first attempt to
successfully manoeuvre the machine ended up in a $100 repairs bill.
The second attempt was also unsuccessful.
The third, the fourth and the fifth too.
And so on, until he undertook the 13th attempt.
On this occasion the machine slightly detached itself from the ground, bounced into the air for a second before crashing into the trees.
The Birdman from Enid.
This is how he has been called by the crowd that first laughed at him, not believing in his succeeding in anything.
He started several businesses, selling and making new models, though all of the ventures ended up in financial troubles.
The First World War stopped for a time the market for leisure and entertainment he was relying on so much.
1929 and the Great Depression led him to spend too much, too fast.
So he went back to farming.
Three years later, he reopened the factory, and later gave it to his family.
The factory kept his name and it became a leading company after his death in 1954.
illusionary mechanism / 10
/// Almost ten years later after Clyde had passed away, The Crickets from Lubbock, Texas, lost their lead singer shortly after their hit record “That’ll Be the Day” had been released.
They looked for a new singer, and even though the new would never have the same charisma as the first, his singing style was
somehow interesting.
Or almost sounded like the original.
The new one soon died.
Like his predecessor in a plane crash.
At that time R. Marciona has already been retired for several years.
Preparing for a film that would later be screened in movie theatres in the States and Europe, in which a fight would be computer-simulated between him and Ali.
In the American version, Marciona wins;
Ali wins the European one.
He would later become the childhood hero of the more widely known Rocky.
But in the film, the truth of the life of the hero is not maintained but instead extended alongside the old age of the actor.
But imagine Rocky – before meeting again the Soviet fighter Ivan Drago in 1985 – dying in a plane crash.
Like Marciona did, in a Cessna, again.
when I look back, I’m in two minds about what I did / 10
Double-sided poster.
Three parts text.
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(see three previous work for text)
