From photographing the sky to designing a plan to launch a spacecraft into space, Axel Straschnoy’s life veers between art and scienceThe two universes may be presented as opposites but find many points of connection that can be explored in your project “Brave Heavenly Wind”It houses the Inifinito gallery of sketches, experiments, studies and models – such as a giant golden comet – that reflect its space program.
Strashnoi is a visual artist born in Buenos Aires in 1978, but lives in Helsinki (Finland). In conversation with Delum, remember that Her father worked in advertising, and she admits that the shootings she starred in with him left an impression on her..
That’s how he decided to go to the University of Cinema, a profession that changed to a bachelor’s degree at the University of Buenos Aires in his first year. Around that time, he started taking photographs: “Every now and then someone would show up and say, ‘What a nice photo. It’s a work of art.’ “It occurred to me that I had to examine whether or not. I didn’t know how to decide whether something was art or not,” he recalls. At the same time he started exhibiting many of those photographs.
Approach to the stars
But still The question is when did it start filtering into the universe? Already in 2002, when Strashnoi was invited to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo, his interest in the sky was evident. “It was a pattern nefelibatasIt’s an expression in Portuguese for people who spend time looking at the sky, so to speak, under the moon of Valencia,” he recalls.
Later, the artist moved closer to interstellar space. In 2012, he released a film he made with a team for the Buenos Aires Planetarium. This work was another precursor: a film about the Northern Lights for the Finnish Planetarium, the country he had chosen to live in a decade earlier.
“In the early 2000s, I realized that my opportunities to exhibit outside of Argentina depended on my ability to fulfill European curators’ imaginations of what Argentine artists are, what Argentine works are. Leaving the country allowed me to change the terms of that conversation,” he said.
A link to the rocket
“Finland was the result of a chain of accidents But it’s true that their artistic support system works well for works like mine. “I went as an exchange student in 2005, I returned to Buenos Aires, and I moved at the end of 2006,” says Straschnoi, who over time found that his fascination with images had a philosophical basis: the artist began to wonder about environmental protection and emergency plans for post-climate disasters. To read, he found two theories: one by Elon Musk who proposed “colonizing Mars” and another by “emergency rockets”.
“Then I started worrying about rockets, and because I live in Finland, I was drawn to something that, according to the translation, is the Finnish Society for Space and Astronautical Research,” says the artist. Turning point in his life.
In this society, Strauschnoi sees a paradox: “It is the seat of the greatest knowledge of space in Finland, but at the same time It’s a place where white, straight men and everyone talk, and they get together and launch model rockets once a month“, he says with a wry smile and points out: “At the same time it’s very sophisticated and a ridiculous hobby that men have,”
“I’m going to be like them and launch my rockets” He thought and decided to join the society who turned 64 these days. According to Strashnoi, it was founded by students who were about to finish high school and were interested in the ships the Americans and Soviets sent into space. Through trial and error, they began building their own rockets.
Society changed over time. “The most important activity he does today is modeling rockets. Making a small motor to reach a kilometer height is not equivalent to lifting a ton,” says the artist.
What was it like starting to learn about space science coming from an artistic background? “It was all self-taught. In the society they taught me how to make these kind of rockets, which are now on display at the exhibition,” Strauschnoi answers.
“I found out that there is a space travel technique called solar sail, it’s a real technique, it works, exists and is used. There must be humans living on Jupiter, because if there are moons and we don’t see them, there must be moons for humans living on Jupiter, otherwise why moons around Jupiter? Will. See them? The artist reconsiders.
Before this, Strashnoi says, “sailing at sea was very dangerous.” Hence Kepler’s proposal: “If we make a sail made for the celestial current, we can sail this sea, this space.”
According to the foundation of the project the artist is working on, a small solar sail could be launched into space, although “it may take thousands of years to leave the solar system, but is fueled by the negative drag of some photons. It will capture, and it will continue to advance.” “, he maintains. And he explains: “No matter how simple it is to build a small solar sail, it would have to be launched beyond the Earth’s orbit, which currently represents an unfeasible launch cost. However, a solar sail is very similar. “A kite: a kite without a tail, string, or weight. Building kites and testing them is one way to build a solar sail.”
“To be honest, it’s also true that I don’t really launch rockets,” Strashnoi adds: “And in art, fantasy, drama and fiction fill that desire.”
A place for everyone
Ships and satellites are not launched into space; They have a mission. To launch his ship, Strashnoi decided his mission was “missionless.”. Against the capitalist thinking that everything must result in a product or profit, the artist proposes to think about “how to live outside”. “One can go to space to live in space, to be in space, and actually space is not about NASA or Elon Musk, or I don’t know about the Chinese space station, everyone’s space” .
The project, now on display at Del Infinito Gallery, plays with “the difference in scale between the enormous ambition and limited means in the demand to make outdoor space accessible to all,” the space explains of the artist’s proposal. On the one hand, it puts individual research and amateur imagination in tension with the sophistication of large-scale technology made possible by large corporations or international corporations.
“Brave the skyly breezes” is Avenida Pte. Manuel Quintana 325, PB, CABA, Monday to Friday 10 am to 6 pm Visit – or inquire.
