I went to the new exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary today, which I’ve been looking forward to for ages because it’s all about space travel and Communism and the idea of a sci-fi utopia as an agent of the state. I eat this shit up. The lecture series they’ve got going on around the exhibition is awesome too.
Some dude’s filmed a new ending to the original film version of Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, and there’s a collection of old propaganda posters featuring cosmonauts. There’s a replica of Sputnik and a bit hissing thing in a pool of water (yawn) but just round the corner from that there’s all this footage of the Star City cosmonaut training camp over four screens - apparently it was never put on any maps, like Area 51. And there’s this other bit where old religious imagery has been covered with pictures of planets and space stuff, like Jesus with rockets coming out of his eyes.
Well done Nottingham Contemporary.
