?Just a few notes on my work here at MDRS to let you know what I’m up to as we haven’t spoken. I’m working on an arts based project which investigates collaboration and daily creative studio practice as a solution for sensory deprivation and isolation in sustained space travel. To design and trial this project, my primary goal is to understand more about the roles of astronauts. The focus for this trip is to learn about the nature of extreme, hostile environments and what it really means to live and work with others in a confined space. So this is work in process.
Art is space is not actually that novel as an idea . Many astronauts have translated their experiences through memoirs or through images. My favourite is the Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov and his fantastic paintings of Earth through the spacecraft window. Today, for many astronauts, photography is usually the medium of choice. What’s not to like about the sublime images of the world shot from 300 odd kilometres in the air? My research however offers something else. It emphasises creativity as a necessary element for survival and it highlights exchange and collaborative daily creative studio practice as another way of understanding ourselves and the complexity of travel in space. Consistent studio practice involves continual engagement. It’s strength is that as a learning space, it accumulates, and along the way creates personal space and light where there is little.
So here we are in the hab, day 12 and I’m thinking about how its all being going. Collaboration around art is a tricky topic, particularly when there is serious science to be done. Exchange is easier though and whatever my role of as an artist has contributed to Crew118, in return the scientific nature of this expedition has completely changed my perspective. From Haritina, our astronomical crew commander, I have learnt how to photograph the density of the stars. Ali, our geologist has taught me and everyone else about the colour of the ancient Utah landscape and has shown me how rocks are central to all our lives. Like others in our crew, much of the outdoor work I have done on EVAS has focused on an understanding of patterns and formations analogous to those on Mars. As a result I’ve been working on a landscape series and a set of detailed rock studies, something I never could have predicted doing before I came here.
Meanwhile, working imaginatively with whatever is at hand is another common theme. Making do or making something from nothing is always a great place to start art work. Don Stewart methodically collected dry red and white clay from the desert which he ground to a dust and then rehydrated to make a stunning coil bowl studded with desert stones. Likewise journalist and filmmaker Mike Bodnar is very used to working on his feet. His daily documentation of the minutiae of our lives here leaves him little time for other art forms yet his interest in circular forms has led him to create a mandela from the coloured sands he finds in the desert. Signature flag painting as a way of making identity prominent has been a great way to encourage the use of paint in the hab. To begin I painted the red green and blue Mars flag, and Haritina painted the Romanian flag, now on her door. Bruce painted the koru of his red white and black Maori flag and Don carefully replaced the Australian flag on our uniform with the red black and yellow flag of our original Australian inhabitants.
So you can see where we are. If only our cooking was as creative. Over and out for now
Annalea