This radiant sculpture will radiate Earth's orbit – and explore the politics of space

In November 1969, six tiny works of art came to the moon.

The journey, undertaken in secret during the Apollo 12 mission, began with the sculptor Forrest Myers, who solicited small drawings by artists Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, David Novros, Robert Rauschenberg and John Chamberlain. "Give me a picture of something you want to go to the moon," he told them.

Only a few months after Apollo 11 landed Americans on the moon, Myers worked with engineers in a lab to engrave drawings, including one of their own, on the surface of a ceramic wafer of less than a thumb. them on the next mission. Approaching the launch date, Myers said that he had not had an answer, so he passed the booklet through an intermediary to an engineer working at the mission. Shortly before the launch, Myers received a telegram confirming that the wafer had been hidden in one of the legs of the lunar module.

The night the Apollo 12 took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Myers, Rauschenberg, Warhol and Chamberlain opened a bottle of champagne at Kansas City's Max bar in Kansas City, celebrating what they thought was the first art of the day. 'space. Today, the play is known as the "Moon Museum".

Now, almost 50 years later, artist Trevor Paglen hopes to draw the public's attention to the skies with "Orbital Reflector", a sculpture in shiny material, just like the Mylar, which will reflect sunlight orbiting around of the earth. The sculpture, contained in a small structure called CubeSat, is expected to be launched in mid-November on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. When it enters orbit about 350 miles from Earth, the sculpture will detach and inflate to its fullest form, a diamond that can shine like a star in the Big Dipper. After about two months, it will return to Earth's atmosphere and disintegrate.

By sending a valueless item into space, Mr. Paglen said he hoped to spark a conversation about who is allowed to operate beyond the Earth's atmosphere. While artists and historians praise its efforts as revolutionaries, some people in scientific communities claim that they lack a practical purpose.

Art and new space arms race

Paglen, a MacArthur 2017 Fellow, has long been concerned about the less visible or deliberately hidden infrastructure that makes up the world. For years, he has tracked the movements of more than 180 US military spy satellites, measuring and photographing their locations for his "The Other Night Sky" project.

In his research, he discovered the work of the Russian supremacist Kazimir Malevich, who in his 1920 text entitled "Suprematism: 34 drawings" described a vision of "Sputniks", objects that revolved around the Earth. More than 35 years later, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, which became the first artificial satellite to orbit around the Earth.

Malevich's writing has exposed "a space imagination very different from that of space," Paglen said.

Mr Paglen points out that humanity's relationship to space is inseparable from the recent history of the geopolitical war, starting with the space race and nuclear capitalism of the United States and the Soviet Union. .

In 1967, the Treaty on Outer Space between the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union stipulated that no one could place weapons of mass destruction or conduct military exercises in space . But in recent years, Russia, China and the United States have intensified the development of weapons for space warfare, marking what some experts have called a space arms race.

And in June, President Donald Trump called for the creation of a space force, which fueled public conversations about the possibility of a space war, but the concept has not gained ground; this would require a vast reorganization of military and congressional approval.

Thinking of this competition between nations, "I was thinking of, can we imagine a version of spaceflight that concerns the public space and does not concern militarism?" Said Paglen.

In 2008, he began to assemble a team of advisors composed of academics, engineers and other members of the aerospace industry. Six years later, he joined the Nevada Museum of Art, which agreed to collaborate with him on the project.

As part of the design process, Paglen considered the level of light intensity that he wanted the sculpture to reflect, the time spent in space and the type of technology that would achieve it. these objectives. According to Amanda Horn, director of communications at the Nevada Museum of Art, the project was funded at $ 1.5 million through a combination of sponsors and a Kickstarter campaign, most of which was spent on manufacturing costs and launch.

The exhibit also had to meet the same extensive national and international standards as any other object in orbit, including those set by the International Arms Regulations, the Federal Communications Commission, and the US Air Force.

Currently, there are more than 1,800 satellites in orbit around the Earth, according to a database compiled by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a rights organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They serve a variety of purposes, including intelligence, telecommunications and research. For Paglen, for this project, he wanted to "build a satellite that is exactly the opposite of all other satellites ever created".

Last week, the FCC granted a license for the project, ordering Paglen and the Nevada Museum of Art to comply with the International Radio Regulations and to provide details of the frequency assignments of the sculpture to the FCC and the US. International Telecommunication Union. The approval marked the final stage of the project's licensing process, a "huge amount of work" that has lasted more than a decade, Paglen said.

Who is allowed in the space?

The project has been criticized and confused by scientists who question the utility of adding what they see as impractical elements to Earth's orbit.

"It's the equivalent space of someone who puts a neon advertising billboard right in front of your bedroom window," Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center, told Gizmodo. .

Some of these criticisms stem from a "feeling of encroachment," said Dr. Caleb Scharf, director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University. The project "does not really understand why we should think about our place in the universe and why we should preserve the possibility of these reflections, which means keeping the night sky as raw as possible," he said. -he declares.

Everyone on the ground does not agree. Kerri Cahoy, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said awareness around space could offset other concerns. "There are two children there on a clear night with a telescope that follows it and shows it and looks at it, and that there is enough event that they go out and do it, so it's worth it, "she said.

Paglen responded to criticisms expressed in August in a Medium series article titled "Let's be angry about the orbital reflector …", saying he hoped to provoke productive conversations.

"My intention has been to sensitize the military and the companies of the whole world to the deeply compromised space," he wrote. "I want people to ask questions about the legitimate uses of space. I want people to think about who should have the right to put in space and for what purposes. "

Artists have long been confronted with the question of who is allowed to occupy places considered technically "public", particularly a group of American artists in the 1960s and 1970s, of which Paglen quotes "Orbital Reflector".

Eager to create large-scale works beyond the walls of the gallery and traditional practices, the artists of the earth turned to the remote landscapes of the American West. By creating massive pieces that defy existing artistic norms, they have drawn the public's attention to lesser known places.

One of the most famous pieces in the movement, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970), consists of a 1500-foot-long black basalt terracing that spirals into the bed of Utah's Great Salt Lake. . Other pieces, including "The Lightning Field" by Walter De Maria (1977), in which the artist placed 400 stainless steel rods 220 feet apart in the western desert of New Mexico , explicitly called the viewer's attention to the relationship between the landscape and the sky.

In many cases, the artists of the earth "not only created large-scale works of art like never before, they also provoked a conversation or provocation about who owns this space, this public space," David Walker, executive director of Nevada Museum of Art, said.

Meanwhile, artist Nancy Holt turned her gaze to the stars.

For the "Sun Tunnels" (1976), Holt placed four concrete cylinders, each the length of a cement truck, in the Nevada desert, miles from the nearest town. For a few days around the winter and summer solstice, the cylinders perfectly frame the sunrise and sunset in the horizon, and a series of cuts in the cylinders also frames the Capricorn constellations, Draco, Perseus and Columba.

Holt wrote about the place: "The Bonneville Saltworks, one of the few areas in the world where one can actually see the curvature, are only 10 miles south of Sun. tunnels. Being part of this kind of landscape and walking on land without being trampled on evokes a feeling of being on this planet, turning in space, at the universal time. "

The artists of the earth "use the Earth as context for the play, but also by making a small intervention on the Earth, [were] asking you to see the Earth with fresh or different eyes, "said Paglen. "For me, that's what I'm trying to do with this project, it's provoking that kind of provocation. It is a kind of intervention in the space space.

Suzaan Boettger, art historian and author of "Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties", says she considers "Orbital Reflector" as the continuation of the work of the artists of the earth. "This is part of an expanding trajectory of places where art can be," Boettger said.

"The space and this vast western landscape are very close to each other," said Kelly Kivland, curator associate at the Dia Art Foundation, who owns both "Spiral Jetty" and "Sun Tunnels".

"The use of space is the next ground for works of art. "It speaks to this idea of ​​the unknown in the relationship with the sky above and our universe."

On November 14, 1969, Apollo 12 became the second manned mission to land on the moon and perhaps the first space art work. Two years later, the crew of Apollo 15 placed a Paul van Hoeydonck sculpture on the moon that commemorated 14 astronauts killed in their line of work. And now, the next generation of space art is almost ready to begin its journey.

Forrest Myers, who directed "Moon Museum," said he hoped to see the day when artists will go to space to create their work.

"I think that once there, they will find many things to do," he said. "It's the future of the art."