Kiluanji Kia Henda, The Spaceship Icarus 13, Luanda, 2007, photo, part of the series Icarus 13
The exhibition Spacecraft Icarus 13, as its title suggests, symbolically collapses together the narrative of the mythical flight of Icarus with that of a concrete historical saga, namely the United States’ space-conquering mission Apollo 13. In so doing it creates a ground from which to seek out the contemporary Narratives of Progress from Elsewhere indicated in its subtitle. The Apollo space program, which played out the US’s competition with the USSR in the ideological fight for Cold War supremacy under the flag of “progress,” saw its 1970 mission fall short when grave technical failures made a lunar landing impossible. Similarly, if an imaginary “Icarus 13” set out on a mission to the sun—as one of the works in the show proposes—it would necessarily fail: just as in the case of its Greek predecessor, getting too close to the sun would cause the craft to fall to its death.
Johannes Schwartz
Yet the absurdity of such a mission is not what’s at stake here, and neither is a desire to revitalize the discussion about the divisions of the world driven by the doctrine of progress. Despite the complex philosophical, political, and historical controversies the notion of progress invites into the discussion, there is a powerful motivational aspect inherent in it. As a forward-looking ideal of improvement, it invites us to think the future beyond today’s devotion to the principle of unfettered global economic growth. This is what curator Cosmin Costinaş had in mind when he brought together artists from various parts of the world—but mainly from “elsewhere”— in order to identify a network of knowledge and dialogue from beyond the territories once (directly) involved in the Cold War rivalry. The works speak powerfully about the necessity to think beyond, in Costinaş’s words, “today’s neoliberal brand of progress,” which repackages “decay and confusion” into its incessant hegemonic practice. And although it might seem improbable to imagine an end to this neoliberal mission—perhaps as implausible as landing on the sun—where if not in the space of art can we shift the limits of what is imaginable, and with it the boundaries of possibility? (Maria Hlavajova)
Artists: Neil Beloufa, Patty Chang & David Kelley, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Federico Herrero, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Mikhail Kalatozov, Cristina Lucas, Yasuzo Masumura, Omar Meneses, Mauro Restiffe, Glauber Rocha, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lin Yilin
Curated by: Cosmin Costinaş
The exhibition is on view from 8 October until 23 December 2011 at BAK, basis voor actuele Kunst, Utrecht.
Spacecraft Icarus 13 is a research exhibition within the framework of the project FORMER WEST.
On display this month at the 
