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”.
Tischsitten / 08
Performative translation of some “good bahviour” lections, from the encyclopaedia “die Frau”, bringing the actual research into further use of semantics and obscure usage of scientific rationality.
pp. 713-721 Handarbeiten, Ed. 10
/ 08
Mnemotechnical tool for household tasks, based on former teaching lessons.
Der weibliche Organismus / 08
Selection of drawings realised on the basis of the chapters “specificity of the skeleton system of the female body” and “female sexual organs”.
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.
Bildsprachführer II / 06
This pictorial-dictionary is based on an original (from the artist’s archive, see “on-going Archive”) produced in 1943 for German soldiers serving in (Nazi) occupied territories in Eastern Europe.
The dictionary (over 100 pages) has been reproduced through drawing page-by-page and translated into English, serving as semantic tools for translation and territorial shifts.
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 capture 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.
