Alexander Kluge & Sarah Morris, Emil Schult:
Raketenbilder

IN OUR DREAMS WE TRAVEL IN NO TIME

Decades before man set foot on the moon, science fiction authors like Kurd Laßwitz were already exploring the utopia of rocket flight and space travel – his novel Two Planets shaped the imagination of none other than Wernher von Braun, the rocket engineer of the Nazi regime (and later of NASA).

While the utopian visions of science fiction have been picked up by various artistic genres – above all literature, film and painting – the real-world development of rocket technology has been driven primarily by military interests. The civil achievements of space travel – from the moon landing to the recent touchdown of the Perseverance rover on Mars – are overshadowed by the deadly power of rockets in wars like those currently being fought in Ukraine, Gaza and Israel.

The exhibition Raketenbilder (Rocket Pictures) presents utopian and dystopian narratives of the rocket in stark contrast. The artist Emil Schult – painter, poet and audio-visual artist, whose practice ranges from Fluxus-inspired drawings to reverse glass paintings and computer-generated images – opens his archive of rocket photos and rocket paintings for the first time. It reveals a utopian worldview shaped by a deep belief in human progress: space as a realm to be traversed and inhabited, the rocket as the essential vehicle to get us there.

In contrast, a series of new "minute films" by Alexander Kluge in which rockets and space travel play a central role is shown. In one of these films, Cats in Space, Sarah Morris co-directed. These are cinematic, and at times grotesque, reflections on humans, dogs, and cats in outer space.

– Max Dax

Curated by Max Dax

With kind support by:
Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf