G e n e r a l a r t i c l e Zero Gravity, Anti-Mimesis and the Abolition of the Horizon OnCosmokineticCabinetNoordung’s “PostgravityArt” I n k e A R n S This article presents the work of the retro-utopian Slovenian performance April 20, 1995. The first reprise is due in 2005, i.e. 10 years and theater collective Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noordung and its effort later. With the same actors, same time, same place, same to abolish mimetic art in zero gravity (“postgravity art”). It describes costumes, same scenography. Everything is to be the same, the origin of a space station rotating around its own axis (designed in ABSTRACT 1928 by Hermann Potocˇnik Noordung in The Problem of Space Travel); except if someone dies. The deceased will be replaced by a questions the relationship between zero gravity and the historical avant- symbol. According to the mise-en-scène, where a live actor garde (especially Suprematism) as postulated by theater director Dragan performed, a symbol will be placed there. Verbal parts of Živadinov; and sketches the past, present and future of the collective’s a deceased actress will be replaced by melody within the 50-year project Noordung 1995–2045. same timing. Verbal parts of deceased actors will be re- placed by rhythm. The live actors will act as if the deceased ones were present. Originally established in 1983 as the department for the- The second reprise is due in the year 2015. The whole ater, opera and ballet of the Slovenian artist collective Neue action will thereby be repeated. All the deceased ones will Slowenische Kunst (NSK) [1], Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noor- be replaced by symbols. The third reprise is due in 2025, the dung [2] (called Theater of the Sisters of Scipio Nasica from fourth one in 2035. The last reprise is to take place in 2045. 1983–1987, Cosmokinetic Theater Red Pilot from 1987–1990, By that time all the actors will be dead. I will be alive and Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noordung since 1990) has been and the stage will be full of symbols. I will then bring the one of NSK’s main groups, along with the music group Laibach symbols to Russia and from there they will be taken by a and the painters’ collective IRWIN. However, despite Noor- rocket to the point of zero gravity, 38,000 kilometers above dung’s common ground with NSK, Dragan Živadinov—a the earth. There they will be given over to the cosmos [4]. candidate cosmonaut and Noordung’s director—has, since The drama Noordung 1995–2045, a “prayer machine [mo- the mid-1990s, advocated for a complete separation [3] from litveni stroj] for the production of holiness” [5] premiered in NSK. Since 1995, the collective has focused on the 50-year Ljubljana in 1995 and repeats at 10-year intervals. The actors, project Noordung 1995–2045 and, in this context, the notion who are bound by contract to participate in this “inhabited “postgravity art” has become synonymous with its activities sculpture” on the subject “Love and State” [6] until the end of (research undertaken by Dragan Živadinov, Dunja Zupančič their lives, will each be replaced after their deaths by robots and Miha Turšič). producing musical or sound effects. At the time of the last In 1993, Dragan Živadinov announced the beginning of iteration in 2045, according to Živadinov, all the actors will the Cosmistic project Inhabited Sculpture One against One be dead; only he, the director, will be alive, and the stage (Noordung 1995–2045). According to Živadinov, this project will be full of symbols, rhythms and sounds—an ideal to- would extend as an artistic 50-year project into the year 2045: tal work of art whose material is organized by its director. On April 20, 1995, at 8:00 p.m., a premiere will be per- For the final iteration, Živadinov will travel into space in formed in Ljubljana. There will be 12 actors appearing in order to position the 14 remote-controlled robots substi- the premiere. The theme: William Shakespeare. The 12 tuted for the actors (umbots) near communications satellites actors live in Ljubljana. The premiere is to take place on in a 35,786-km-altitude geostationary orbit, and thus abol- ish retro-garde. He predicts: “Dragan Živadinov will die on May 1, 2045.” The final reprise ofNoordung 1995–2045 will be Inke Arns (curator, director), HMKV, Hoher Wall 15, 44137 Dortmund, Germany. Email: [email protected]. Web: www.hmkv.de, www.inkearns.de. held in weightless conditions in a collective orbital theater, an See www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/52/1 for supplemental files associated observatory rotating around its own axis. All the projects that with this issue. have been developed “in the spirit of Hermann Noordung” ©2019 ISAST doi:10.1162/LEON_a_01377 LEONARDO, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 17–22, 2019 17 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01377 by guest on 02 October 2021 by Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noordung will culminate in this In his illustrated book The Problem of Space Travel: The performance and thus “come to an end” [7]. Rocket Motor [15], originally written in German and pub- The group has been working on the actual implementation lished in 1928 [16], Noordung was the first to describe a of this long-term project since 1998. In July 1998, Dragan technically detailed space station rotating on its own axis in Živadinov passed all medical examinations necessary for order to generate artificial gravity. This wheel-shaped space cosmonaut training. Then, on 15 December 1999, members station reappeared later in Willy Ley’s book The Conquest of of Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noordung completed a training Space (1949); in Willy Ley and Wernher von Braun’s articles flight near Moscow—with over 20 flight parabolas—to pre- in the series Man Will Conquer Space Soon!, published in Col- pare them for a possible future orbital mission [8]. This event, lier’s Weekly (1952–1954) (Ley and von Braun recycled ideas referred to as Noordung Gravitacija Nič (or as Noordung Bio- from Noordung’s book circulating at the Verein für Raum- mechanics), took place at Jurij Gagarin Cosmonaut Train- schiffahrt in Berlin in the late 1920s); and then in the films ing Facility in Star City (Zvezdnyj gorod). All this testifies to Man in Space, Man and the Moon and Mars and Beyond, the obsessive seriousness with which Cosmokinetic Cabinet which Walt Disney realized with Ley and von Braun (1952– Noordung is embarking on the path of the Slovenian space 1953) [17]. Finally, the wheel-shaped space station achieved pioneer Herman Potočnik Noordung. More than that, this world fame through Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001—A Space project is about submitting one’s own body to a radical physical Odyssey (1968) and Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 eponymous cult understanding of the ideas and concepts of the historical avant- movie. garde [9]. For both actors and audience, the utopian project In 1993, inspired by Dragan Živadinov, the Viennese pub- of a “total theater” of the avant-garde of the early 1930s is lisher Turia+Kant was the first to publish a reprint of the transforming into a claustrophobic, totalitarian inner space. original German edition of Noordung’s Das Problem der It is a theater machine that literally moves its viewers—be- Befahrung des Weltraums—Der Raketenmotor [18]. Apart cause, for the observatory, as Noordung wrote in 1928, it is from a technically elaborate description of the space station, “primarily . important . that any arbitrary orientation in Noordung also supplies a wealth of ideas for possible ex- space, which is necessitated by the observations to be carried periments in the space observatory in this book. Experts of out, can easily be assumed” [10]. space medicine therefore consider Noordung to be one of the founders of their discipline [19]. Noordung’s text also describes a geostationary satellite 35,786 km above Earth and Herman PoToCˇnIk nooRdunG, Space PIoneeR develops ideas for autonomous power generation in the space This afternoon just as I was leaving for the Otters Club to station through a combination of solar, steam and electric beat up the locals at table tennis, I noticed two young Eu- motors. ropean backpackers hovering around my gate. Stopped to According to Noordung, the space station would consist find who they were, and discovered they were a couple of of three individual entities: Slovenes, who’d hiked here to deliver this book to me!! Do First, the “habitat wheel,” in which a man-made gravita- you know it? I’ve never seen the original, and the illustra- tional state is continually maintained through rotation . ; tions are fascinating. Though of course, I was familiar with second, the “observatory”; and third, the “machine room.” some of them, notably the space station design. While retaining the weightless state, the latter two are only —Arthur C. ClArke, 15 JAnuAry 1993 [11] equipped in accordance with their special functions; they provide the personnel on duty with a place for performing Since the early 1990s, the work of Cosmokinetic Cabinet has their work, but only for a short stay [20]. been dominated by the ideas of Hermann Potočnik Noor- For the observatory, it would be essential “that any arbi- dung [12] (1892–1929)—a Slovenian engineer who signifi- trary orientation in space, which is necessitated by the obser- cantly influenced twentieth-century space technology as well vations to be carried out, can easily be assumed” [21]. as twentieth-century science fiction. After having (barely) survived World War I, he devoted himself in private studies Red Pilot And the VictoRy oVeR Gravity to exploring space, until he died of pneumonia in 1929 at the age of only 36.