SPACE LIBRARY

 

Group exhibition: GLAS GLAS GLAS at Göteborgs Konstförening, December 2021

 

A 30 million-page library has been sent to the moon as an archive for whoever may find it millions of years into the future. This space library is what somebody has decided we on earth in this time can show, saying what is important about our world, telling our story.  

 

Glass is a human-made material. Humans developed and made and elaborated it and turned it into one of the foundation stones of modern civilization. Imagine the world without windows and telescopes, spectacles and microscopes. 

 

This collection of glass objects, tiny tardigrade creatures and body parts is a selection of specimens from a crystalized world, a weird excavation gone wrong.  

 

Space Library is an imaginary shipment to the outer worlds and the future. It contains samples from our world that certainly will not make sense to anyone who finds it.

 

Note:

Moss piglets (or tardigrades) are tiny creatures – just 1mm long – that have been around for 500 million years. They are living all around us. They are the great survivors of everything – radiation, extreme cold, no water and every other challenge. Moss piglets are actually present on the moon, sent out in a space library that crash-landed there. There they go into suspended animation and crystallise; put another way, they survive by turning into glass. They can be revived when they are given water. For how long they will survive on the moon, no one knows.

 

Installation: Kiln-cast glass and window glass, mirrors and wood.