| German cosmonaut Thomas Reiter
comments on the Ars Ad Astra Exhibition given during a live link-up
with the Mir space station.
The following exchange took place on November 30, 1995
at the EuroSpace Center in Transinne, Belgium. The speakers on
Earth
were ESA Public Relations employee Daria Robinson and ESA astronaut
Elf Merbold, and ESA
cosmonaut Thomas Reiter on the Mir space station. During the
link-up the cosmonaut crew announced the winning artwork - the
crew's favorite of the 20 original artworks sent to the Mir space
station.
ESA - Daria Robinson:
" Mir, can you hear us, this is Belgium. Thomas, can you hear us?
Hello Thomas, provedjen ... We have here a very large crowd of
people. First we want you to show us a little art in space and
tell us what is your favorite."
Cosmonaut Thomas Reiter:
" O. K. Daria. Thank you for the introduction. I hope you can see
all the 20 drawings fastened together on a wall which hopefully
gives some contrast and a point of view to the different pictures...
It was quite a difficult task for us to select a favorite picture
out of these because we liked them all. We took the task very serious,
in fact it took us more than a week. One evening we took 10 out
of the 20, on the next evening we dropped three of the ten so
seven
were left. 
"
You can see on the other row the three pictures. The winner is
this picture from Ms Caroll Smith.."When Dreams are Born" .....
The last seven pictures we choose the second place is the picture
from Mark Maxwell, called "Promise". It was very difficult,
it took a long discussion and the next evening we had a look
again and confirmed it. The third place is a picture called "Unforgettable
Home" from Alessandro Bartolozzi and they were quite close
the second and the third place and we like to thank all the
artists.........
" .....and let me tell you that there are many things here on board
which keep us alive, of course technical systems which produce
oxygen to breathe, water to drink which clean the air from
carbon dioxide, food and all these things which help to keep us alive,
life support systems. But I can tell you that this kind of
thing (he holds up a picture) are a part of what is necessary to keep
us alive, to keep the memory to the Earth, to our families,
to our friends, to the nature.
So we thank you all very much for these beautiful pictures,
and for those who have not been selected ....... we can assure
you
that we like all of your pictures. Maybe it was a little unfair
to force us to do a selection, so, thank you very much."
More info: www.arsadastra.com
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