What would daily life look like on the moon?
In 2009, Alicia Framis wandered the streets of New York for fifteen days in a real astronaut costume for the project Lost Astronaut. She had asked fifteen artists to give her assignments. Marina Abramovich made her walk through the street as slowly as possible for three hours, and read the New York Times backwards; Matthew Light asked her to go to a Japanese restaurant and play with the chopsticks - an impossible task for someone dressed as an astronaut.
Ever since that performance, the moon is a recurring theme in Framis’s artistic practice. She seems to be enormously attracted to the figure of the lost astronaut. Fascinated by 'what daily life would look like on the moon', she gathered artists, designers, architects and scientists to design that life, keeping in mind the conditions of life on the moon.
The MoonLife Concept Store in Amsterdam presents the products and prototypes that are the result of these collaborations, intelligently balancing between functional, humoristic and a more poetic design. Amongst the products are a passport for citizens of planet earth; a fashionable clothing collection with shoes and bags made of a fabric that stops data traffic; a proposal for a graveyard on the moon for people from earth; a handbook for life on the moon; a LED fireplace; and a design for a house with specific adjustments regarding the fourteen days light, fourteen days night cycle of the moon to imitate the human biorhythm.
The next phase of the MoonLife project will be in collaboration with real astronauts, Framis would like to test the prototypes and products on a training and research centre in Utah, which is to result in a film.
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Full Moon Symposium
On saturday 8 October, artists, designers, architects and scientists gather at the Full Moon Symposium at SMBA in Amsterdam. There will be a Moon Dinner with astronaut cuisine at the end of the symposium.
MoonLife Concept Store
18 September 2011 – 15 October 2011
Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal 262 (at the ground floor of Sprmrkt Specials), Amsterdam
Paula Ampuero, Atelier van Lieshout, DUS architects, EDHV, Alicia Framis, Sandra Gnjatovic, Barbara Imhof, John Lonsdale, Maryme-JimmyPaul, Satyendra Pakhalé, Tao Sambolec (met Brian McKenna), Maria Serret, Sarah van Sonsbeeck (met Susan Bijl), Marina Toeters, Monica Tormell en Staffan Bjork, United Nude, Juha van ‘t Zelfde. The MoonLife Concept Store Catalogue is designed by Metahaven.
