Ingrávidos

Fundación Telefónica presents Weightless, by Daniel Canogar, a multimedia project reflecting upon space exploration and mankind’s survival in the cosmos.

Daniel Canogar is one of the most internationally recognized young artists from Spain. He has already exhibited with the Fundación Telefónica, in addition to his exhibits in Paris, Quebec, New York, Caracas, Ohio, Düsseldorf and Berlin, among other cities.

The project applies an artistic focus to a field generally relegated to scientific research. Weightless focuses on the concept of an astronaut, used as metaphor for the profound changes that man is currently going through in technologically advanced societies.

This exhibit interrelates the experiences of astronauts in zero gravity and other cultural phenomena found on planet earth, such as children’s space camps (where children practice with astronaut training equipment), movie theatres with Omnimax enveloping screens that provoke feelings of weightlessness in the viewers, gravitational rides at amusement parks and special effects in science-fiction movies.

The exhibit was presented to the press by the artist himself, Daniel Canogar, accompanied by the general director of Fundación Telefónica, Fernando Villalonga.

THE COSMOS IN OUR EVERYDAY SPACE: FROM SPACE TRAVEL TO LEISURE ACTIVITY

The collection seeks new interpretations of daily activities, including those previously experienced and those unrelated to space exploration.

To Canogar, our leisure culture provides substitutes to a public demanding space travel: “The inaccessibility of outer space has resulted in the appearance of leisure centers that directly explore mankind’s space travel. The public goes to these places as a substitute for space travel, and there they sense that they are participating in what is perhaps one of the greatest adventures in recent human history.”

Currently, some ten million people visit these thematic centers throughout the world and, according to the artist, “Weightless points to the very much alive, yet unconscious collective desire of man to escape from the earth. This collective fantasy is relevant at the present time in that it is symptomatic of the anguish produced by the tumultuous situation on the planet. Ecological disasters, the return of the specter of world war, and the appearance of hunger and endemic poverty in the southern hemisphere – these dramatic events have caused our imagination to surge. Indeed, we need to escape psychologically from the realities on earth.” Thus, the need to evade all this is closely tied to the astronaut’s spirit of exploration.

CITIZENS IN SPACE: A RISKY UNDERTAKING

Despite the fact that the goal of conquering space is increasingly attainable, human fallibility in facing these journeys is also increasingly apparent. The presence of normal citizens in space, according to Canogar, “is beginning to seem more like a reality everyday. However, the promise of democratizing space travel is not materializing quickly enough for a culture that has dreamed of intergalactic travel for centuries. All the examples mentioned in this exhibit are symptoms of the incessant desire of the West to leave the earth. But once again, our technology fails us. On February 1 of this year the Columbia turned into a ball of fire above Texas upon entering the earth’s atmosphere. The images we saw on television showed us a space shuttle in pieces, leaving trails in the sky as it fell.”

For Canogar, this fatal accident completely altered the trusted balance coordinates of space navigation: “The remains of the sacrificed astronauts fell and scattered to earth just as modern day images of Icarus. This fateful day has rekindled doubt about the real possibility of our ever achieving the much desired state of weightlessness.

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