In 2012 I approached the European Space Agency with a very ambitious proposal: to produce the
most comprehensive survey ever assembled about a leading scientific and space exploration organization.
Though notoriously secretive, I have contacted ESA at an interesting time in
its history when it is looking to open up a dialogue with the general public.
It
is the first time hat it has granted an artist exclusive access to all of its facilities, staff, programs,
technology, etc.
This project had an 18-month gestation period and covers more than 20
separate facilities spread across 9 different countries.
This projects looks to critically
engage with ESA’s programs, whilst also reflecting on the new politics of space exploration as well as the
impact of this kind of technological application on our individual and social consciousness.
ESA's
spaces are inexorably heterogenous, places where there is a convergence, overlapping and blurring of
meanings, functions and temporalities so my main challenge with this project was to develop an approach that
was simultaneously descriptive and speculative, documenting but also disassembling the spaces and objects
and therefore revealing their poetic derivations and their cultural and ideological resonances.