[spectre] MIR: Art in Variable Gravity

[Kathy Rae Huffman]

MIR: Art in Variable Gravity 
Saturday, November 08, 2003 - Sunday, December 14, 2003
An Arts Catalyst Exhibition
CORNERHOUSE, Manchester, UK
 
OPENING HOURS: Tue-Sat 11am-6pm, Late nights Thu until 9.00pm, Sun 2-6pm
ADMISSION FREE
 

MIR presents new video and installation works commissioned by science-art
agency The Arts Catalyst and the MIR partnership, by Stefan Gec (UK), Vadim
Fishkin (Rus/Slo), Yuri Leiderman (Rus), Otolith Group: Kodwo Eshun,
Anjalika Sagar and Richard Couzins (UK), and filmmaker Andrew Kötting (UK),
with photographs by Evgeni Nesterov (Rus).

MIR is a unique project that has facilitated artists' work in conditions of
zero gravity (weightlessness) and in high G-forces, with the collaboration
of the Russian space programme. In such extreme and unstable circumstances,
risk and the unknown have large parts to play.

Such artistic experiments have become possible with the end of the Cold War
and coincide with the search for a new rationale for space activities. As
international political support for space programmes has weakened, so
utopian cultural arguments for space exploration have begun to re-emerge,
such as Russian cosmism, the artistic and philosophical idealism that Earth
is the cradle for humankind and that sooner or later we will inevitably move
into space. These utopian ideas dominated much earlier thinking about space,
both in science-fiction literature and artistic expression, before the space
age started and the Cold War context superseded these ideas with the 'Space
Race' and 'Star Wars'. At the dawn of a new millennium, it is timely that
artists and independent cultural activists are reclaiming these territories,
in a contemporary and very direct sense.

The works in this exhibition emerge from recent MIR (Microgravity
Interdisciplinary Research) campaigns which have enabled artists and
scientists to undertake projects using the facilities - including 'zero
gravity' flights and the giant centrifuge - at the Gagarin Cosmonaut
Training Centre in Star City, the heart of the Russian space programme and
one of the former 'closed cities' of the Soviet Union. 

The MIR partnership is a collaboration between a group of international art
organisations: the UK-based Arts Catalyst and Projekt Atol in Slovenia, with
V2 in the Netherlands, Leonardo/OLATS in France and the US, and the
Multimedia Complex for Actual Art in Russia. The MIR Initiative aims to open
up space facilities by matching artistic processes and scientific research
to give new impetus to space research and space art.

<http://www.artscatalyst.org/projects/space/Space_MIR_INDEX.html>

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Ewen Chardronnet
Sat 8 Nov - Sat 29 Nov
Gallery One 

Ewen Chardronnet (Fr), media artist, researcher and writer, will be in
residence for three weeks during the show at Cornerhouse, working in Gallery
1, initiating project and research work involving gallery visitors,
communities, and other artist networks. Chardronnet is author of an
anthology on the Association of Autonomous Astronauts (AAA), "Quitter la
Gravité" (L'Eclat, 2001 - Escape from Gravity) and currently working within
the Makrolab territory 2003, Campalto island operations in the Venice
lagoon.

 
MIR DJ Event 
Friday, November 07, 2003 9.00pm till late

Featuring a variety of truly spaced-out sounds and stellar sets by 'starmen'
DJ's Kodwo Eshun and Ewen Chardronnet on the anniversary of the Bolshevik
Revolution. The day remains an official holiday in Russia.

 
MIR : Unknown Territories 
Saturday, November 08, 2003 12.00 - 3.30pm Cinema Two

An opportunity to find out about international artists who are working
beyond the usual confines of Earth. An excursion into the explorative and
experimental nature of the MIR project; a place where the outcome is
dictated by events or phenomena way beyond the predictability of gravity or
the artists' control.

A panel discussion chaired by Marko Peljhan (Slovenia), artist and founder
of the Makrolab project, shown at the Venice Biennale 2003 and Documenta X.
Including presentations by The Arts Catalyst director Nicola Triscott and
curator Rob La Frenais. Also featuring: Ewen Chardronnet (Fr); Stefan Gec
(UK) and Yuri Leiderman (Rus). 

Tickets from Box Office £3.50 full / £2.50 concs

+

4.00 - 5.30 Cinema One Education Room 

MIR roundtable discussion and reception, an opportunity for informal
discussion with the artists, project partners and other members of the
public. Free with panel discussion ticket.


Kathy Rae Huffman
Director of Visual Arts
Cornerhouse
70 Oxford Street
Manchester  M1 5NH  UK

www.cornerhouse.org 
8 Nov - 14 Dec  MIR: Art in Variable Gravity