Residencies

• 03.01 > 08.01.2022
• 01.11 > 07.11.2021
• 19.11.2025

In Parable of the Talents, sci-fi author Octavia E. Butler descri­bes how the first man­ned spa­ce shutt­les lea­ve Earth in 2090. They are on their way to a spa­ce sta­ti­on named Christopher Columbus. She objects to the name. But one can­not win eve­ry batt­le. The name means nothing. On February 18, 2021, the Perseverance spa­ce robot lands on Mars. NASA names the lan­ding sta­ti­on Octavia E. Butler Landing. In 2027, Perseverance II departs. The shutt­le moves quick­ly through time, toward what — from a dis­tan­ce — looks like a burning wall. The cre­w’s sur­vi­val kits con­tain: instruc­ti­ons for bre­a­thing in spa­ce, a water puri­fi­ca­ti­on devi­ce, see­ds, tools, an AI that plays music.
The crew inves­ti­ga­tes how the appro­a­ching wall muta­tes their ima­gi­na­ti­on and their cells. How disas­ter sha­pes the way they move. How their sen­ses and their voi­ces chan­ge as dusk sets in and the wall draws ever clo­ser.

The crew mem­bers are sur­roun­ded by expe­ri­men­tal DIY sca­le models, cal­l­ed ​‘liva­bi­li­ties’, ​‘bre­at­ha­bi­li­ties’, ​‘ten­de­ri­tes’, ​‘futu­re ancestors’. 3D simu­la­ti­ons of the hori­zon, the bodies, the thin­king, and the pla­ces they long for. They devi­se tech­ni­ques to track down mis­sing peo­p­le, to look into the past and the futu­re, to con­nect with each other across dis­tan­ces, to pass on know­led­ge and spe­ci­al powers to tho­se who need them.
Have they expe­rien­ced this situ­a­ti­on befo­re? It must be so, how else would their bodies be able to anti­ci­pa­te it? Were they part of ano­ther spe­cies in ano­ther time? Beings who are now infor­ming them how to end­ure this crash and still come out ali­ve?
It hap­pens to each of them at a dif­fe­rent moment. Without rea­li­zing what has hap­pe­ned, they are ups­i­de down. And gra­vi­ty is nothing more than a vague memo­ry. They beco­me some­thing com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent from what they could have ima­gi­ned.

Birdlike.
Starlike.
Fish migra­ting to ano­ther planet.