Moon Gallery Garden: Moon Gallery update 2020

Moon Gallery Garden

We will give a report on Moon Gallery Garden exhibition 6 June to 12 July, 2020, Amsterdam and give an update on recent Moon Gallery activities and steps towards the implementation of establishing the first gallery of art, artefacts and science on the Moon. 

A lunar lander with rovers and telescopes settled at Zone2Source in the Glass House, Amsterdam along with a selection of artworks and prototypes designed to be sent to the Moon by the end of the year 2022. The exhibition also included astronaut performances while wearing spacesuits to ensure safety and avoid contamination.

About Moon Gallery:

Moon Gallery aims to set up the first permanent gallery on the Moon. Moon Gallery intends to launch 100 artefacts to the Moon within the compact format of 10 x 10 x 1cm plate on a lunar lander exterior panelling as early as 2022. In this Petri-dish-like gallery, we are developing a culture for future interplanetary society. What are the ideas we want to promote into the future? What are the ideas we want to leave behind?

Moon Gallery as a pilot platform within the framework of the Moon Village, ITACCUS & ILEWG aims to instigate inspiration for the global space exploration and demonstrate how the challenges along this journey drive innovative design thinking and interdisciplinary collaborations. ILEWG Art Moon Mars collective leads this project, coordinates events and develops content through a series of open calls.

Relevance/Significance:

Size is one of the biggest challenges of space exploration and the disparity between big ideas and resources for their realisation often stands in the way of many experiments. We ask our participants to think big but small - each idea has to fit within just 1 cubic cm. Creativity is defined as the production of ideas or solutions that are novel and useful (Amabile,1988, 1996). Constraints can give creativity a purpose, a perspective, a starting point. Constraints make us feel challenged and in particular, this statement is accurate for the subject of space.

The most challenging and full of constraints environment – Moon – should bring us to the most creative culture and society we believe. At the moment the human presence beyond the Earth is only a matter of survival, but how to make the first step towards making it habitable?

We suggest bringing this collection of ideas as the seeds of a new culture. We believe that culture makes a distinction between mere survival and life. Moon Gallery is a symbolic gesture that has a real influence – a way to reboot culture, rethink our values for better living on Earth planet.

Moon Gallery is a Manifestation. Neither a place nor an object. Paradoxically a tiny gallery too small for Earth is designed to last on the Moon as a monumental heritage site for thousands of years. Building an everlasting monument, say a pyramid on Earth took a joint effort of a great nation, launching a rocket takes a multinational effort.

Mission Statement:

We hope to bring the best of humanity to the Moon and to bring the benefits of the Moon to all people on Earth through a sustainable exploration process. Our initiatives connect Art, Moon, Mars and beyond. This includes the organisation of meetings, workshops, art-science-space classes and projects at various universities, sessions at international conferences, art exhibitions, musical and visual performances, and art-science-space platform – Moon Gallery Foundation.

Moon Gallery Objectives:

– promoting cooperation: bridging innovation, science and art, crossover with space research, developing a space art experiment;

– stimulating research: a collective reflection on artistic heritage, analysis – how to design for space (1/6th gravity, extreme environment);

– promoting artistic quality: offering artists follow up opportunities involving space science expertise;

– reinforcing international position of artistic practice: "International cooperation towards a world strategy for the exploration and utilization of the Moon - our natural satellite" (International Lunar Workshop, Beatenberg (CH), June 1994).

Acknowledgements:

We acknowledge Hans Broymans and Alice Smits (Zone2Source) for the support of the Moon Gallery Garden in 2020; Moon Gallery Garden Participating artists: Eva Petric, Aneta Zeleznikova, Lakshmi Mohanbabu, Jamal Ageli, Ronald Vles, Ilaria Cinelli, Isabella Douzoglou, Eduardo Kac, Mai Wada, Andy Gracie, Oded Ben-Horin, Priyanka Das Rajkakati, Hady Milani, Sophie Hooghiemstra, Max Baraitser Smith, Sofia Chin, Zuza Banasinska, Renato Japi, Tobias Schalm & Alban Muret, Minna Philips, Maria Polushkina, Johan Recen Larsson, Hans Brooymans, Mary Kuiper, Alexandra Arshanskaya, Badriah Hamelink, Thomas Heidtmann, Anastasia Izotova, Jorick De Quaasteniet, Arina Livadari, Daria Kozhina, Daria Akhrameika, Maria Beaumaster & Sarah Bovelett, Studio Samira Boon, Dana Lamonda, Mark IJzerman, Martin Sjardijn, Guy Livingston, Alexandra Ljadova, Lisa Van Casand, Studio Furthermore, Gabriele Lorusso, Emmanuele Villani. We thank Cesare Barbieri for hosting Moon Gallery lecture at Rotary Club, Università di Padova; EuroMoonMars analog astronauts and colleagues who deployed and tested the gallery prototype at  various analogue campaigns: EMMIHS Hawaii, Igluna Zermatt and EMM Iceland. We thank ILEWG and IAF ITACCUS for endorsing the project. We acknowledge Alexander Zaklynsky contribution to the project in 2018.