Space Programme 2011

February 3d 2011. It was the middle of the night when I received the message. I was invited onto the SPACE Programme 2011. While jumping a hole in the air I wondered where I'd left my space suit.

The Space Programme offers artists of all disciplines an opportunity to collaborate, experiment and innovate in an inspiring environment. The project takes place over a two-week period at Castletown House Co. Kildare, it is an open ended process hosted by The Performance Corporation. The programme facilitates artists from diverse backgrounds to collaborate and explore their artistic process while removing the pressure to come up with an end product.

This weblog gives an insight in my thoughts and working process during the Space Programme and tells about some projects that came out of this wonderful opportunity.

woensdag 16 februari 2011

Star Man


(polaroid, 2008)

It was a coincidence. I wasn’t looking for him but there he was. Star man.
I had googled “ space programm celbridge” and first on the Google list I found “Star Man Project”. I immediately forgot what I had been looking for and read about Dave the Star Man who has an asteroid named after him (21782 Davemcdonald) and who’s an amateur astronomer specialising in astrophotography, providing data to a variety of organisations (the Minor Planet Center and NASA). He operate’s the Celbridge Observatory and collects amazing images of solar systems, nebulae, galaxies and supernovae (take a look here). An astronomer in Celbridge. Somebody who knows about Space. I would like to meet him when I’m in Celbridge.

Stars have been on my mind lately. In my last project in Ireland I made drawings on the streets, connecting old bits of chewing gum by drawing white chalk lines inbetween them. The results unintentionally resembled star signs.
The most amazing thing in this project was that some of the star signs “came alive”. For example: I drew the “weeping woman” on a street leading towards the river Lee. It looked as if her tears were flowing into the river. A couples of days later the river flooded a big part of the city.

You can read more about this particular project here.