Artists Imagine A New Society On The Moon

Professor Stephen Hawking called for the moon to be colonized; Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic will push space tourism into the final frontier. But just why should we set up shop? What is the draw, apart from the idea of saving the human race from possible invasion, potential business propositions, or even just the naked ego of it all? What’s the future of our lunar friend, and, maybe most importantly, just who owns the Moon? Such is the question at the heart of an ongoing exhibit titled Republic of the Moon, centered around how artists view our future lunar colonization. Initially a curatorial project, the first version of the exhibition was shown at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) in Liverpool, UK in 2011. Rekindled in London on the 10th of January at the Bargehouse, a gallery next to the river Thames, the exhibition is now complete with a new manifesto from the artists involved. Curated by Rob La Frenais of Art Catalyst, the commissioning organization behind the project, the exhibition brings together artists from the original show with a series of events and questions centered on humanity’s relationship with the Moon.

Leonid Tishkov, Private Moon. 2009. Presented by The Arts Catalyst in Republic of the Moon.

“It is everyone’s’ project,” explains Leonid Tishkov, one of the artists involved in bringing the Moon down to earth via Private Moon, a collection of photographs featuring his very own manmade Moon. “My part in this is extremely romantic. It’s important for me to say, in a post industrial era, that I am an artist, I am a romantic, I have a realistic view of the universe, on civilization..” says Tishkov. “I think you need to discover the Moon, you need to use the Moon as a poetic object, as a mythological story.”

Liliane Lijn Moonmeme, color.

Others in the show take a more bombastic approach. Liliane Lijn offers up Moonmeme, an homage to the age old connection between the menstrual cycle and the Moon. Imagining the possibility of a time when the Moon’s surface could be used as a billboard, Lijn heads off the idea by projecting the word ‘SHE’ on the surface, slowly revealing the entire word as it rotates in orbit.

Sue Corke and Hagen Betzwieser, We Colonized the Moon.

The majority of the show remains playful. Sue Corke and Hagen Betzwieser bring us the scent of the moon in a shopping cart, and a simple chalkboard that says ‘A Theme Park Or A Quarry’.

Agnes Meyer-Brandis presents Moon Goose Analogue: Lunar Migration Bird Facility, the largest installation in the exhibition and an award winning display–having received a prize for distinction at Prix Ars Electronica 2012. Meyer-Brandis based the work on a science fiction novel by a 17th century English bishop, in which a flock of geese are used to take off to the moon. Meyer-Brandis trained her geese to fly, took them on expeditions, and housed them in a remote moon training camp in Italy, also giving them “astronaut’s names.”

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Moon Goose Analogue: Lunar Migration Bird Facility,2013, commissioned by The Arts Catalyst and FACT, in partnership with Pollinaria.

One artist who manages to balance playful concept and romantic intent is Katie Paterson; Paterson’s Earth-Moon-Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon) and Second Moon are two pieces that use distance as a starting point for a journey, the first using a technique called EME, the second piece, by air freight courier around the world. 

Katie Paterson Earth-Moon-Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon).

EME was a technique developed in 1940 to use the Moon as a reflector for radio signals and Paterson ehances it with a translation of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in morse code. The song bounces off the surface of the Moon using Morse code from earth, and returns fragmented by the moon’s surface. The code has then been re-translated into a new score; the gaps and absences becoming intervals and rests. In the exhibition space, the new ‘Moon–altered’ score runs on a self-playing grand piano in the exhibition and haunts the space as only a chopped up sonata from the Moon can.

Second Moon takes a more modern approach to tracking, a fragment of the moon currently being couriered around the earth for one year at twice the speed of the Moon. Paterson has created an app downloadable here that tracks the Moon fragment’s progress. At the time we wrote this the moon was somewhere in the middle of Australia.

The exhibition in London is due to be filled with a number of performances and events throughout its run, from January 10th until the 2nd of February–culminating with a Global Lunar Day on 1 February which will see members of the Royal Observatory Greenwich, International Lunar Exploration Working Group (amongst others) debating international cultural approaches to the moon. Artist Joanna Griffin, who is also in the exhibition, draws our attention away from the classic USA/ Russia/China diatribe with her work within Asia at the Srishti School of Arts in Bangalore.

Leonid Tishkov sums up the manifesto, “The image of the Moon its very important for humanity, everyone has fairytales. Let us reach for the moon but not touch it. If the Moon becomes simple territory for people it will lose its wonder, and we will have lost a very important part of culture.”

Leonid Tishkov – Private Moon, 2011, Presented by The Arts Catalyst in Republic of the Moon, 2014.

Republic of the Moon will be on display till February 2nd at Bargehouse Gallery, Oxo Tower Wharf, 

South Bank London SE1 9PH, UK. More info available at ArtsCatalyst.org.