Lisa Oppenheim, USA: No Closer to the Source (July 20, 1969)
Larissa Sansour, Palestina: A Space Exodus
Saso Sedlacek, Slovenien: Space Junk Spotting

Universe is unknown, mystic, thrilling and has always attracted humans. What is outside the Earth, and the celestial bodies, has generated imaginations, ideas, myths and the foundation for ideologies.

Artists, authors, philosophers, theologians and scientists has for millenniums discussed the human existence and the universe, maybe with a peak during the cold war period when the space race between East and West led to the Moon landing, and inspired many films and books in the Science Fiction genre.

The adventures, science and the technological development lead to consequences. Around Earth parts from rockets and satellites circulate and have become an increasing problem. In total there are 38 million different objects, just a few millimetres small up to the largest one, a part of a space shuttle measuring 47 x 6 metres. The Slovenian artist Saso Sedlacek has linked an American data base to Google Earth, so it is possible to navigate around Earth and like a space archaeologist study the scrap.

Lisa Oppenheim often works with material, images and film, she finds in the Internet or in archives. Her installation No Closer to the Source (July 20, 1969) is based on images of the Moon and Earth, taken on the day of the Moon landing in 1969. The images have been copied over and over again and she has then transferred the material to 16mm films and let the films zoom in the surfaces. What at a distance looks like cosmic and geographical elements, in the closer study end up as dust and dirt, added when the images were copied. The moon landing, which was a “great leap for mankind”, suddenly, appears very historic and distant. What Oppenheim does, is that she points on the gap in between a historic event and the marks it leaves in the archives.

Larissa Sansour is born in Jerusalem and grew up in Beit Jala in Palestine. Her film A Space Exodus shows a Palestinian astronaut, played by Sansour herself, placing the Palestinian flag on the moon. The Middle East conflict is transferred to cosmos, when the Palestinian takes her first step as an explorer and conqueror.

For more information contact info@mejanlabs.se, curator Björn Norberg, +46708825873 or visit www.mejanlabs.se

In collaboration with the National Museum of Science and Technology and Stockholm University/the Year of Astronomy 2009. Saso Sedlacek’s installation Space Junk Spotting is both at the National Museum of Technology and at Mejan Labs.