Tomás Saraceno proposes balloons rides into outer space
His current exhibition, Becoming Aerosolar, shows different ways of traveling into space without necessarily contaminating the environment with rockets.
Why do we still send rockets into space that burn so much fuel if we can clearly see the acceleration of global warming? Is it because that is the only way to get there? Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno thinks that it is not, and his most recent exhibition in Vienna, Becoming Aerosolar, suggests other possibilities.
We could float into space in balloons from space stations that orbit in the upper atmosphere. His concept is not so different from his past exhibitions, except that Aerosolar is manifestly ‘Anthropocene art,’ referring to the earth’s geological era in which humankind is the most influential factor in the planet’s biological and environmental processes, and therefore imagines a metabolic and thermodynamic transformation of our relationship both with our planet and our sun.This element opens an image.
Becoming Aerosolar comprises a series of sculptures, objects and installations, including a hot-air balloon floating over the white sands of the desert to show us how we could float in space. The exhibition invites us to think about new ways of transporting ourselves and feel the circulation of energy and resources; new ways of exploring sidereal space.
There is no question that chemically propelled rockets are expensive, pollutant and, as we are often reminded, dangerous. Saraceno is also promoting an international campaign for sustainable travel into outer space in Space Without Rockets, a conference at UTEP led by the engineer John Powell, whose company is innovating the idea of “floating in space” with balloons.
The exhibition runs until August 30, 2015 in the 21er Haus gallery in Austria.
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