Colloque - Images de l’espace : histoire, théorie, esthétique

Thursday 30 March 2017 to Friday 31 March 2017

Colloquium's programme
Boulevard James Fazy 15
1201 Genève
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Organised in association with L’Observatoire de l’espace, the arts-sciences laboratory of CNES (the French space agency), this colloquium will focus on the study of images of space activities.

Based on the exceptional archives of the arts-sciences laboratory of CNES, which include maps, drawings and plans of space projects (rockets, satellites, manned vehicles, interplanetary probes, rovers and scientific instruments), the colloquium also welcomes images produced by instruments sent into space to explore the universe and study our own planet as well as to images created as an extension of these two categories, whether relating to artists’ perspectives, spatial observations or cinematic projects. 

The most widely broadcast images of space activities have rarely, if at all been considered as such. Hence, one can wonder about representations of earth and how these have evolved, and about artists’ perspectives and their conceptual representation of spatial objects. As for the images that escape media coverage, resulting from work processes that call heavily upon visualisation, these still remain to be studied. From the outline of an idea to the final production of an object, how does one understand the relationship between project and projectile? Moreover, what type of academic outlook requires these images? And how do these relate to other outlooks and share in the creation of an imagined reality? 

In order to grasp these images’ forms and concepts, from the scientific world that produces them, and in order to understand their significance in an open-ended history of representations at the crossroads of aesthetics and iconology, the scientific work implemented by this colloquium is based on a combination of two approaches: inter-disciplinary (through fields of study that have been opened since, i.e. sociology, ethology and anthropology, history of art and sciences, aesthetics and the philosophy of images) and pragmatic (since all of these fields of study are based on historical case studies and documents, analysed according to their practical dimension). 

This colloquium offers an enhanced look at issues raised in the ‘Images of Space: Archives, Exploration, Fiction’ artpress2 issue, also created in association with the arts-sciences laboratory of CNES (the French space agency) and in partnership with HEAD – Genève, to be published in February 2017. 

Featuring: Gérard Azoulay, Sebastian Grevsmühl, Ségolène Guinard, Christophe Kihm, David Kirby, Jérôme Lamy, Claude Mettavant, Elsa de Smet, Peter Szendy.

Reservations and information: 
Martina-Sofie Wildberger

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Patch Space Poetry créé par Eduardo Kac pour Télescope intérieur à l’occasion de la mission spatiale Proxima, 2016
© Eduardo Kac