The Future Looks Different: Art Breaking the Space-Time Continuum

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What can contemporary art do? We talked about modern art and design that traveled to space in spaceships (not to mention the whole discussion the historical avant-garde was having about creating the fourth dimension in their works at the time). Today in Sweden/Finland, artist HR-Stamenov created a wormhole: that is, he exploited the Einstein-Rosen bridge to take a shortcut through time and space as we experience it:

On March 12, a strange phenomenon will connect two cities located on the two opposite sides of the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea: Vaasa in Finland and Umeå in Sweden.

A transport corridor, provoked by the opening of a Wormhole, also known as an Einstein–Rosen bridge, which is a hypothetical topological feature of space-time, will create a ‘shortcut’ between the two cities. The phenomenon will allow a Train to appear inside a building in Vaasa, then 3 minutes later in Umeå, then back in Vaasa after 3 min. and after 3 min. again in Umeå…CONT HERE

Of course, HR-Stamenov is actually illustrating theories of time travels and space distortions by means of lights, that is, through  art rather than science.  But if Constructivist spaceships anticipated real ones, I wonder what this portal looks like. 

Soviet Socialist Republic of Mars

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As I suggested in my last post, Constructivism became the language of the future. Aelita, Queen of Mars was a 1924 silent film directed by Yakov Protazanov. It is often called the first Soviet science fiction film because of its futuristic sets on Mars (although most of it takes place in Moscow). Avant-garde artist Alexandra Exter‘s did the costume designs for the film immediately before she and her husband emigrated to Paris. Prior to that she exhibited with Constructivist artists and taught in Moscow.

The sharp angles and abstracted curves of Constructivism had become associated with science, technology, and human progress. Mars itself, portrayed on the left, looks like the architectonic forms that often appeared on avant-garde canvases at the time. In this elaborate setting of technological advancement, we watch the story of Aelita, Queen of Mars and other fantastically costumed denizens unfold.

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Interiors on Mars, above, costumes (note the maid’s pants!) below.

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The technical advancement of the Martians does not equal social advancement as we learn when the protagonist is finally propelled to Mars in a spaceship–all for the love of Queen Aelita. Mars then becomes not merely a site of escapist fantasy for the viewer, although it was certainly that, but a Utopian space of social change. Or perhaps a chance for the director to toe the part line. Either way, the visitors from earth discover oppressed workers on Mars and try to incite a revolution in order to create a Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics on Mars! I won’t spoil any more of it in case you want to watch it–its available for streaming with English subtitles and accompanying music here.

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Spaceships: Vehicles to the Future, to Escape, to Utopia

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Before I got sidetracked by humorous Russian news of strikingly different varieties, I wanted to continue to talk about spaceships. Méliès’s 1902 Trip to the Moon worked like a canon. The spaceship available at the New Museum right now are of a much more technically sophisticated variety. Report on the Construction of a Spaceship Module is a new exhibition on the fifth floor of the New Museum. The exhibition itself recreates the interior of the spaceship Ikarie XB-1, after the 1963 Czechoslovakian film of the same name.

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Above, stills from Ikarie XB 1, below interior of New Museum

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Between post-WWII and pre-1989, space could be an escape valve for countries of the Eastern Bloc, as they imagined Socialist utopias on Mars, reached through the inevitable progress of science and society. These fantasies were represented in science fiction films and novels, of course, but also reflected in the visual arts. The premise is fascinating. However, this thematic was only partially engaged in in the works on view, as the exhibition organizers, tranzit, also wanted to show their organization’s practice and growth in the Eastern European region. The show felt fractured because of that, and perhaps hard to grasp even if you didn’t know that was one of the aims of the show.

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But more unfortunately, information about the art was not well communicated. For example, detailed  information about individual artworks, usually handled via wall text, is not easily accessible. This would seem to be the natural result of the way the objects in one small room were piled on top of each other on shelves while the large room was given over to video. I  would have benefited from more than a laminated sheet identifying the title and artist of a work, which I could then match up to a newspaper containing the exhibition checklist to learn more about an artist. Certainly, the space is not large, but is this the best way to handle it?

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The largest room is given over to a single screen with five hours of mixed videos highlighting all the different efforts tranzit has made in the region. When new content appears the original title scene and opening credits are all you have to go on–not a lot of contextualization for what seems to be a broad base of material. Obviously, five hours is more than the average visitor will spend there, and there isn’t a way to view only segments of particular interest. Assuming this isn’t intentional mystification, then unfortunately this show does not unpack the treasure trove of materials, many never seen in the United States. More could have been done with much less. If you have the stamina to dig for information and/or wait, or perhaps just enjoy serendipity, then the exhibition certainly contains a lot of fascinating material. I just had more hope for the spaceship.

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