Decor for Interstellar Flight, 2012–2013


Installation view: The Evergreen College Gallery as part of Sensations that Announce the Future, October-December 2015. Photo by Shaw Osha.

Installation views: SOIL art gallery, August 2012
distemper, acrylic, pigment, paper, foam, glue, oranges


Installation view: Seattle-Tacoma Airport, January-April 2013

The super-lightweight painting panels in this exhibition are informed by conditions that might exist in a spaceship during a long flight to another star: close confinement, slow passage of time, a small community, a highly artificial environment. They are intended to act as a kind of calendar. One panel is added and one removed by the astronauts each day of the voyage. Over the course of a year this simulates daily, weekly, and seasonal environmental variation.

The psychological health of a crew during long-duration space travel is a non-trivial problem. When humans adapt to an extreme environment (an environment uninhabitable except when mediated by technical aids) the relevance of social interactions increases considerably. This implies the desirability of a flexible habitat and the development of a system of decor which focuses on processes, rituals, and interaction rather than rigid principles: an adaptable expression of a living society, or an adaptable appropriation to a future society.


untitled panel
acrylic and pigment on paper on foam
48 x 24", 2012


exhibition zine
ink on newsprint
4 pages

download the zine