ars astronautica texts and articles
Performance Art In Zero-G
Arthur Woods
2001-2008
Artists are training to become the next generation of space explorers. A branch of space art involves artistic experiments which have taken place on airplanes doing parabolic flights inside the atmosphere. As such, these projects incorporate the effects of weightlessness into their production and artists have been able to personally experience the effects of microgravity.
Kitsou Dubois, a modern dance choreographer living in Paris, underwent a series of parabolic flights organized by the French Space Agency CNES in 1990 and in 1999 in order to assist astronauts adaptation to weightlessness. She later translated this experience into a "modern ballet". In September 2000, she made additional parabolic flights at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.
In 1998 Frank Pietronigro became the first American to investigate art making in weightlessness with the creation of acrylic paintings suspended in mid-air. Pietronigro flew his Research Project Number 33 from on a parabolic flight originating from NASA Johnson Space Center's Ellington Field. A microgravity environment was achieved aboard the Boeing KC135 turbojet, that flew 42 parabolic maneuvers which resulted in a series of 20-25 second periods of weightlessness.
1999. Slovenian theater director Dragan Zivadinov's staged a performance called Noordung Zero Gravity Biomechanical during a parabolic flight organized through the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training facility in Star City.
The London based Arts Catalyst group organized a parabolic flight in 2000 for choreographer Kitsou Dubois and three dancers, with the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, in association with Projekt Atol Flight Operations, as part of Dubois' collaborative research project with Imperial College. The 2000 flight also enabled other artists - video artist Mike Stubbs and Slovenia theatre director Dragan Zivadinov - and scientists Professor Susan McKenna-Lawlor and Dr Chris Welch, to experience zero gravity.
Also in 2000, a second group of artists from the San Francisco Art Institute led by Lorelei Lisowski followed Frank Pietronigro into weightlessness, again with art projects presented as science - on a NASA student parabolic flight. Lisowski's Space Camp Barbie was one 'non-science' projects that managed to sneak onto the flight.
In 2001, the Arts Catalyst organized M.I.R. Flight 001, enabling a number of artists and scientists to undertake projects in parabolic flight and in Star City. Projects included Ansuman Biswas and Jem Finer's Zero Genies and an installation of spherical gongs and colored liquids, a dance work by Morag Wightman, a scientific investigation into movement control conducted by Anthony Bull from Imperial College, and projects by artist Louise K Wilson, film-maker Andrew Kotting, electronic music group Flow Motion, and media artist Andrey Velikanov.
In both Europe and in the U.S. a growing number of artists have been taking advantage of the opportunity to personally experience weightlessness during parabolic flights. In the summer of 2008, Lyn Hagen, also from the U.K, organized a zero-g parabolic event in Russia including the participation of artists Luke Jerram and Nasser Azam. Hagan and Jerram became ill in the early part of the flight, a quite common occurrence; however, Azam was able to add the finishing touches to several paintings that he had begun before the flight.
Azam’s work, Homage to Francis Bacon: Triptych I sold in auction on 14th November, 2008 for $332,500 in New York at Phillips de Pury’s Contemporary Art Part II auction.