| AIR & SPACE OVERVIEW | MIR |
Stills, Edinburgh, 23 Cockburn St, Edinburgh, Scotland
19 March - 05 June 2005
MIR - Dreams of Space presented new photographic, installation and video works by British and Russian artists reflecting the utopian idealism that spurred the start of the space age and the enduring legacy of the Russian quest for Space.
Stefan Gec (UK)
Yuri Leiderman (RU)
The Otolith Group: Richard Couzins, Kodwo Eshun, Anjalika Sagar (UK)
Evgeni Nesterov (RU)
Carey Young (UK)
The works were created through the MIR programme, a unique initiative which enables artists to work in conditions beyond the confines of Earth's gravity - in zero gravity and hypergravity - using facilities at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, heart of the Russian space programme and one of the former 'closed cities' of the Soviet Union.
50 years after the launch of Sputnik, and at the start of a new millennium, with new aspirations to build the International Space Station and to reach Mars, it is timely that artists are reclaiming these territories, in a contemporary and very direct sense.
A programme of MIR documentary and artist films accompanied the exhibition, including work by Andrew Kotting, Ewen Chardronnet, Ansuman Biswas & Jem Finer, Morag Wightman and Marcel.li Antunez Roca.
As part of the MIR - Dreams of Space season, Stills and The Arts Catalyst presented a special Screening event recalling the early days of the space race, introduced by Rob la Frenais.
'Everything Normal, the equipment is working perfectly'
at Stills Thursday 07 April, 7-9pm FREE
'I see the earth from Space: it is beautiful.' These words have gone down in history as the first official utterance made by Yuri Gagarin in Space. In reality, the flight transcript from commander Gagarin's Vostock craft reveals that the pioneer Russian cosmonaut's actual first words translate more as 'Everything normal, the equipment is working perfectly.'
Introduced by Rob La Frenais, curator of MIR and The Arts Catalyst, the programme opens with Attention Weightlessness, a Russian educational film, and continues with films by Acoustic Space Lab, Andrei Ujica, The Priviet Mission (with live simultaneous translation), Louise K Wilson, Andrew Kotting and Ansuman Biswas & Jem Finer
To read what the Sunday Herald said about MIR - Dreams of Space click here
www.stills.org
