LIFE ON MARS
11th APRIL 2014, 3space, London, 7pm - 10pm
Free Admission. Please RSVP to [email protected] - THE EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED
The evening of the 11th of April is a tribute to nine decades of the Russian classic Aelita by Yakov Protazanov and the eve of the 53rd anniversary of the first human flight to orbit the Earth by Yuri Gagarin.
The programme of the night evolves around the relation between Mars and Earth, drawing a link between two planets, reality and fantasy, documentary and science fiction.
90 years after Protazanov’s film, Mars missions and colonisation are all suddenly coming into focus as close-to-realistic propositions. To celebrate humanity’s close encounters with the surface of Mars and ahead of the exhibition at the Science Museum in London on the Soviet space programme, this evening will link the two anniversaries, celebrating the film that contributed enormously to the popularisation of spaceflight in Soviet culture in the ‘20s, and still today fascinates for its influence over future science fiction films.
As part of this special event, the venue will be transformed by selected international visual artists. Amongst them, artist, adventurer and future astronaut Michael Najjar, French visual artist Anaïs Tondeur, documentary filmmaker and former planetary scientist Christopher Riley and, premiering works in UK, Lithuanian artists Laura Grybkauskaite and Vsevolod Kovalevskij. The night will also feature a sound performance, based on NASA transmissions, by the sound artist Andrew Page whose work has been exhibited in art galleries in the UK, Europe, America and Canada.
Free Admission. Please RSVP to [email protected] - THE EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED
The evening of the 11th of April is a tribute to nine decades of the Russian classic Aelita by Yakov Protazanov and the eve of the 53rd anniversary of the first human flight to orbit the Earth by Yuri Gagarin.
The programme of the night evolves around the relation between Mars and Earth, drawing a link between two planets, reality and fantasy, documentary and science fiction.
90 years after Protazanov’s film, Mars missions and colonisation are all suddenly coming into focus as close-to-realistic propositions. To celebrate humanity’s close encounters with the surface of Mars and ahead of the exhibition at the Science Museum in London on the Soviet space programme, this evening will link the two anniversaries, celebrating the film that contributed enormously to the popularisation of spaceflight in Soviet culture in the ‘20s, and still today fascinates for its influence over future science fiction films.
As part of this special event, the venue will be transformed by selected international visual artists. Amongst them, artist, adventurer and future astronaut Michael Najjar, French visual artist Anaïs Tondeur, documentary filmmaker and former planetary scientist Christopher Riley and, premiering works in UK, Lithuanian artists Laura Grybkauskaite and Vsevolod Kovalevskij. The night will also feature a sound performance, based on NASA transmissions, by the sound artist Andrew Page whose work has been exhibited in art galleries in the UK, Europe, America and Canada.
SCREENING PROGRAMME:
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First Orbit UK | 2011 | colour | sound | 1:78:1 widescreen | DVD | 96’ (showing excerpt) Directed by: Christopher Riley Courtesy of: The Attic Room |
First Orbit recreated the real time experience of Yuri Gagarin, during his pioneering orbit of the Earth in 1961. Christopher matched the orbit of the International Space Station to Vostok 1’s original flight path and, with the help of astronaut Paolo Nespoli, he filmed a new HD view of Earth, as Gagarin would have seen it. The resulting film was premiered around the world for the 50th anniversary of Vostok 1 on the 12th April 2011. It screened at over 1600 venues in more than 130 countries, and was simultaneously watched by a record YouTube audience, for a long form film, of over 2.4 million people.
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Pulsar Lithuania | 2013 | colour | sound | 1ch video projection |16:9 | 58’’ Director: Vseolod Kovalevskij Courtesy of: the artist |
The work addresses expanded cinema and asks what is beyond it. I created it while working as a projectionist, which gave me an insight into what is going on behind the projector’s light. Working with traditional film (8mm, super8, 16mm, 35mm, etc), it is very clear where there is the start point and the end point of a movie. In Pulsar, there is no end and no beginning. This project has no narrative in the context of cinema, nor does it have an image that one can relate to. By screening a silent film from a 16mm projector I used a digital camera’s lens as a screen to project the movie onto. Thus, a completely new image was created, one that has nothing to do with the actual film. Also, this image was accompanied by sound that was not part of the movie. This piece is titled Pulsar because it reminds me of something cosmic, something that is beyond the earthbound reality. Yet at the same time it is reminiscent of some microscopic photon event that one can only see through an electronic microscope, like the big bang or Higgs boson that physicists try to locate trough the Large Hadron Collider. (Vsevolod Kovalevskij)
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Mars – Planet issue ‘Peace and War’ UK | 1939 | black and white | sound | digital | 1’43’’ Animations by: Joe Noble Courtesy of: British Pathé |
From cavemen sacrificing girls to the God of Mars to an ancient astrologer studying the night sky, this short doc from 1939 shows with animated diagrams Mars and its polar ice caps, its satellites, moons and orbit with an entertaining unscientific tone.
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Aelita
USSR | 1924 | black and white | silent | English intertitles | DVD | 104’ Director: Yakov Protazanov Screenwriters: Fyodor Otsep, Alexei Faiko Cinematographers: Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky, E. Schoneman With: Yulia Solntseva , Nikolai Tseretelli, Valentina Kuinzhi, Nikolai Batalov, Igor Ilinsky Production company: Mezhrabpom Russ Courtesy of: Ruscico |
Renowned film scholar and Sight & Sound contributor Ian Christie and specialist in Soviet culture James Norton will introduce the screening of Aelita.
An example of early Soviet science fiction, the film is based on Alexei Tolstoy's book of the same name, a science fiction fantasy in which Los, an engineer living in Moscow, dreams of Aelita, the Queen of Mars, and builds a spaceship to take him to her.
Filled with subtle erotic tensions and national predilections of the moment, the Martian adventure is known for its incredible leaps of fantasy running parallel to documentary-style depictions of 1920s Moscow.
The film at the time was considered most remarkable for its use of Constructivists sets and outlandish costumes in its Martian sequences, which influenced many subsequent designers and illustrators of science fiction stories. Created by the noted Cubo-Futurist painter Alexandra Exter, who had been influenced by Tatlin and Malevich and who was friend of Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger and Guillaume Apollinaire, these avant-garde Constructivist designs glorify formal abstraction and simplification instead of photographic realism and are a reminder of the brief period in which revolutionary art seems the natural ally of revolutionary politics.
Released officially in September 1924 at the peak of the space fad, Aelita was the first Soviet science fiction film and one of the most important of the interwar era. It influenced subsequent and internationally better-known European directors and contributed enormously to the popularization of spaceflight in Soviet culture in the ‘20s. The film still today fascinates for its influence over future science fiction films, and its psychological storyline, which resonates in films noir, and for its detailed look at life in the USSR.
Filled with subtle erotic tensions and national predilections of the moment, the Martian adventure is known for its incredible leaps of fantasy running parallel to documentary-style depictions of 1920s Moscow.
The film at the time was considered most remarkable for its use of Constructivists sets and outlandish costumes in its Martian sequences, which influenced many subsequent designers and illustrators of science fiction stories. Created by the noted Cubo-Futurist painter Alexandra Exter, who had been influenced by Tatlin and Malevich and who was friend of Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger and Guillaume Apollinaire, these avant-garde Constructivist designs glorify formal abstraction and simplification instead of photographic realism and are a reminder of the brief period in which revolutionary art seems the natural ally of revolutionary politics.
Released officially in September 1924 at the peak of the space fad, Aelita was the first Soviet science fiction film and one of the most important of the interwar era. It influenced subsequent and internationally better-known European directors and contributed enormously to the popularization of spaceflight in Soviet culture in the ‘20s. The film still today fascinates for its influence over future science fiction films, and its psychological storyline, which resonates in films noir, and for its detailed look at life in the USSR.
WORKS EXHIBITED:
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Interplanetary Landscape
Germany | 2014 Photographic work from the series "outer space" Original size: 132 x 202 cm Photographer: Michael Najjar Exceptional presentation as projection only for this exhibition Courtesy of the artist |
The work Interplanetary Landscape focuses on the similarities between Mars and Earth. Geologic evidence suggests that Mars could have been warm and wet on a global scale in its distant past. Intense geologic activity has reshaped the surface of the Earth, erasing evidence of our earliest history. Martian rocks could be even older than rocks on the Earth, so exploring Mars may help us decipher the story of our own geologic evolution including the origins of life on earth.
Yet the earth also has Mars-like landscapes such as the Atacama Desert in Chile. These extremely dry landscapes which closely resemble the surface of Mars are used by NASA and ESA as test sites for future Mars rovers. The work of the rovers is considered as the first step in the colonisation of Mars.
The artwork merges a photograph taken in the Atacama Desert with photographs taken by the Mars rover Curiosity which is currently active on the Martian surface, sending images and scientific data back to Earth on a daily basis.
Yet the earth also has Mars-like landscapes such as the Atacama Desert in Chile. These extremely dry landscapes which closely resemble the surface of Mars are used by NASA and ESA as test sites for future Mars rovers. The work of the rovers is considered as the first step in the colonisation of Mars.
The artwork merges a photograph taken in the Atacama Desert with photographs taken by the Mars rover Curiosity which is currently active on the Martian surface, sending images and scientific data back to Earth on a daily basis.
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A Mutation of the Visible France | 2013 black and white | sound | widescreen| HD Video | 3’50’’ | loop Projection of drawings by Anaïs Tondeur Courtesy of the artist |
A Mutation of the Visible consists of five drawings that investigate significant stages in mankind’s shifting perception of the moon. This pictorial research explores the ways knowledge is formed and evolves through visions and understandings of the moon from antiquity’s myths to the invention of instruments of observation and 20th century space exploration.
Since time immemorial, the moon has been observed, studied and worshipped. It holds a place of particular fascination in our earthbound lives provoking the imagination to escape its limits. However, whilst the moon has always been in man’s field of vision, its symbolism and nature have changed considerably according to different cultures and eras. This series of drawings starts with one of the most ancient and anthropomorphic perceptions of the Moon: the pareidolia of a human figure imagined amidst the dark lunar markings. The project then investigates the determining role played by optical instruments from the 17th to the 19th century, before going on to explore new viewpoints opened up by lunar exploration and never before available from the earth’s surface.
Since time immemorial, the moon has been observed, studied and worshipped. It holds a place of particular fascination in our earthbound lives provoking the imagination to escape its limits. However, whilst the moon has always been in man’s field of vision, its symbolism and nature have changed considerably according to different cultures and eras. This series of drawings starts with one of the most ancient and anthropomorphic perceptions of the Moon: the pareidolia of a human figure imagined amidst the dark lunar markings. The project then investigates the determining role played by optical instruments from the 17th to the 19th century, before going on to explore new viewpoints opened up by lunar exploration and never before available from the earth’s surface.
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Transmissıon Lithuania | 2009| etching| dry needle | soft polish | 50x65 cm Prints by Laura Grybkauskaite Courtesy of the artist |
The piece Transmission is inspired by the relationship between life and death. They seemed like two references in the unknown and unreachable Universe. Every life and every death appeared as a dot, reminding stars, tiny needles in the sky. Counting of time, as well as counting on economic values appeared relative, agreed upon only on Earth. Life turned into a synonym of Earth, as death remained a mystery, the unknown, just like the Universe, Cosmos. (Laura Grybkauskaite)
Following the screening of Aelita, Andrew Page will perform Solaris Variations, Cronus, GD 358, three pieces based on sound waves respectively from the Sun, Saturn and a white dwarf in the constellation of Corona Borealis.
The event is curated by Giulia Saccogna and Simona Zemaityte and is organised in collaboration with Ferodo Bridges and 3space.
Venue: 3space, 29-31 Oxford Street W1D2DR
Doors open at 6.45pm. The event starts at 7pm and is expected to end at 10pm.
Drinks will be available at the venue.
Free admission.
The event is curated by Giulia Saccogna and Simona Zemaityte and is organised in collaboration with Ferodo Bridges and 3space.
Venue: 3space, 29-31 Oxford Street W1D2DR
Doors open at 6.45pm. The event starts at 7pm and is expected to end at 10pm.
Drinks will be available at the venue.
Free admission.
