Savelyeva, Mushtrieva, Hofmeister Ribeiro: Robinienhof
Interview: Gamze Can. Publiziert am 20. SEP 2024
Hello Lucy, Maru, and Antonio, it’s great to have you here as part of this year’s GOLDSTÜCKE program! Congratulations on being selected through the Open Call. We’re excited to learn more about your collaborative artistic practice and the fascinating research behind your work. As a collective with diverse backgrounds, we’re eager to hear how your ideas come together and what message you aim to convey through your exploration of space debris and broader environmental issues.
— Are you familiar with Gelsenkirchen and the GOLDSTÜCKE? What motivated you to apply for the Open Call?
In the past, we were invited by Bettina Pelz to share our work during the WATER LIGHT Festival in Brixen. The open call reached us through shared channels. We had already presented the work in a public space, and we saw this as a great chance to share it with a larger audience. We have never been to Gelsenkirchen, but we would love to visit if the opportunity arises.
How would you describe your artistic practice?
The three of us often work together on developing a research-based practice. Antonio and Liudmila come from a new media background, while Maru comes from the literary and performance fields. We collaboratively build the piece, continuously exchanging research and building on each other’s ideas.
— What aspects were particularly important to you during the creation of your artwork?
The initial work was conceptualized and developed as an interactive installation piece designed to interlink the spatial perceptions of the audience with a narrative side of the piece. At DIPLOPIA we can show a small excerpt from a longer 30-min-loop piece that employs speculative fiction to imagine what the actors in the space debris field in the coming years would be.
— What core idea inspired your current work, and what message do you want to convey with it?
Space debris can be viewed through a double bind. The problem of the trash on the near-Earth orbits is very real: it damages orbital vehicles, poses risks to crews, and even obstructs scientific observation to some extent. However, beyond the debris itself, this piece explores extractive practices in general. Space offers a unique lens to examine these actors more clearly in their interrelations—since, even with the rise of commercial space travel and satellite companies, the number of actors is still limited to states and a few corporations capable of launching satellites. Thus, this work serves both as a study of material relations and as a metaphor for our relationship with waste, extraction, and neoliberal markets.
— You address the issue of defining outer space as a “free space.” What would be your definition of a free space? And how would you define outer space in this context?
That’s exactly the point: ‘free space’ doesn’t truly exist and never has—or rather, all space is free. It’s a contradiction because, throughout human history, claiming ‘free space’ has often been tied to colonial and extractive practices, or to pretending that the space wasn’t previously occupied. This concept extends to a wide range of relations, from colonizer and colonized, to human and non-human relationships. Outer space, while seemingly uninhabited, carries with it the fantasy of discovering another thinking entity, a notion that accompanies human thought—partly driven by ethical searching, partly as a way to justify actions. But beyond speculation, we’re already seeing the moon and asteroids being claimed and sold to companies. So even without proper access, property is already being divided, and that is unsettling.
During the Cold War, when space exploration began, the terminology surrounding the discovery of non-Earth space split into two contrasting understandings: ‘space’ and ‘cosmos.’ ‘Space’ implies something empty that can be filled—what do we choose to fill it with? These radically different conceptions of outer space have significant implications for space debris politics. What does it really mean to share ‘space’?
— Do you have a favorite artwork from this year’s GOLDSTÜCKE program?
To be honest, we haven’t had the chance to fully familiarize ourselves with the program. It would be great to have an artist meet-up where everyone can connect, chat, and share their work—even if it’s an online meeting.