Air and space in art

The launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957 marks the beginning of a space race between the Soviet Union and the United States. Who would be first to orbit the earth, launch a human into space, or eventually put a man on the Moon?

The course of the twentieth century is not only shaped largely by secularization and the process of decolonization but also by technological advances. An important question has become the individual’s relationship to the changing world. Rapid technological developments in space travel and natural science receive considerable media attention.

Space exploration, architecture, and philosophy

Space exploration plays a major role in everyday life at a particularly fascinating juncture, writes Geert Buelens, Professor of Modern Dutch Literature: “That space travel took such giant steps in the same years in which decolonization took place is intriguing. [...] Outwardly, it seemed entirely concerned with science and civilization, but in fact barely disguised a hidden drive—to possess and dominate.” [i] He calls another conceivable motive “a guilt-ridden endeavor, beyond Earth, to compensate for the mess humans had made of their own planet.”2

Looking at the designs by architectural collectives Haus-Rucker-Co, Coop Himmelb(l)au, and Archizoom, all established in the late 1960s, one is immediately struck by the way air is used as a material to create protective, organic forms that isolate the individual from the outside world. It seems to reflect a vision of a better future, “makeable, mobile, light, and free from authorities.”3The philosophy of the ’60s also shows a renewed interest in the question of how the individual relates to their environment. Following the death of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty in 1961, interest in his seminal work Phenomenology of Perception is reignited when it is translated into English in 1963.4 Merleau-Ponty posits that the human body is the primary means of knowing the world. The use of air and space as artistic material can be traced back to two points that at first seem paradoxical: the desire for sensory, physical experiences, on one hand, and the more ideological progressive optimism based on scientific advancement, on the other.

The Eventstructure Research Group

The Eventstructure Research Group was founded in 1968 by artists Jeffrey Shaw, Theo Botschuijver, and Sean Wellesley-Miller. The previous year, several members had worked on events that clearly anticipated what the group would do next. For example, Corpocinema was performed in 1967; first in Rotterdam, by Theo Botschuijver and Jeffrey Shaw, and then two months later in Amsterdam, with Sean Wellesley-Miller. In happenings and actions such as the Corpocinema, the collective sought out the boundaries of cinema by testing the traditional, one-sided relationship between audience and screen. From the moment the Eventstructure Research Group is established, the group strives to “break through the conditioning in the general pattern of experience and behavior, for example, in the first years of its existence by applying surprise elements in everyday situations, for example, on the street.”5 The name of the collective echoes a trend in which artists present themselves as institutions; for instance, Pieter Engels’s E.P.O. (English Product Organization) and the I.I.v.H.v.K. (International Institute for Retraining Artists, founded by Reinier Lucassen, Jan Dibbets, and Ger van Elk), about which Wim Beeren wrote, “These functions and names are alternatively fictitious or wholly businesslike. They all illustrate a situation in which the artists have turned their backs on the specialist official institutes and address their audience directly."7

According to Boezem, “Every month I sent one show to people who worked in the visual arts. They were then able to order a work of art based on these ‘silly’ comic strips. Several Shows were realized later.”17 Take, for example, Show XV Soft Room (1968), in which a room is filled with lightweight tables spread with tablecloths that undulate in the airflow produced by moving fans. “A swirling, transparent cloth continuously takes on a changing spatial appearance in fluid motion. Space is not primarily presented here as an object with fixed boundaries, but as content: the air. The tablecloths are the medium through which the immaterial air can manifest itself as a variable aspect of space,” says Boezem.18 A slightly different application of air can be found in Show V Immaterial Sculpture (1965). The accompanying typescript emphasizes the intended sensory experience: 

“Various air doors through which one can walk are installed in this show. This offers the sensory experience of warmth, air, and cold. See technique used by revolving doors in department stores. Boezem 1965.”

stanley brouwn

That space travel had an influence on the consciousness of the relationship between the individual and the world around them is beyond dispute. A new academic discipline devoted to considering how this would impact the future even emerged: futurology.21 But artists also theorized about the role space would play in the future. For example, in 1967 Boezem wrote a manifesto on the role of air in the year 2000. Three years earlier, stanley brouwn (1935–2017) had described what the year 4000 would look like, “When science and art are entirely melted together to something new / when the people will have lost their remembrance and thus will have no past, only future. / When they will have to discover everything / every moment again and again when they will have lost their need for contact with others… / …then they will live in a world of only color, light, space, time, sounds and movement will be free / no music / no theatre / no art / no / there will be sound color light space time movement.”22 As art historian and critic Sven Lütticken wrote recently, this manifesto clearly stems from the enormous interest in space travel at that moment.23 This interest was part of the broader movement of the intensification of information, communication, and science. The artist himself stated that one of the most important aspects of his work is “the scientific approach.”24

Among other things, this approach underpins the series of this way brouwn that he made from 1962 onwards. This well-known series of works consists of sketchy drawings made using a black marker pen on a white sheet of paper, drawn by passersby whom brouwn approached on the street and asked to draw a route from A to B. In this series, brouwn emphasized the experience of time and space. He saw this kind of activity as “opportunities for the public to discover the city, the earth, once and for all, before mankind once and for all, enters space.”25

In 1969 brouwn made a new version of his this way brouwn, entitled this way brouwn per telegram. A copy of the telegram, shown in the exhibition Amsterdam, the Magic Center, is the result of an invitation circulated by brouwn’s gallery, Art & Project. The invitation contained an instruction: on the day of the opening, the invitees had to send a telegram documenting the approximate route that they would travel that evening between their home address and the gallery. In this way they were made aware of their relationship to their environment.

Against the background of the decolonization process and the appropriation of the Moon by opposing world powers, it is interesting that, in several works, brouwn was busy with what could be called “collecting countries.” This becomes all the more interesting when we take into account that brouwn came from Suriname, a country colonized by the Netherlands for almost three hundred years. He started by collecting steps taken by himself and others. This practice took on a new dimension when the steps referred to other countries, such as in the

 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam in 1970, or when the steps were taken in other countries, such as for his exhibition Steps in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam the following year.25 Every day brouwn called the museum to pass on the number of steps, and the countries in which they had been taken. This information was recorded on a blank card in the exhibition. On April 6, 1970, brouwn bought a square meter of land in the Netherlands. The person who sold this square meter wrote a letter declaring that the artist already currently “owned” about ten countries.26 The artist’s aim was to buy square meters in as many different countries as possible—vantage points from which he could, in his imagination, look at a point in space.          

In this brief essay it was not possible to discuss all the layers of meaning in the aforementioned works in great detail. It shows, however, how the Eventstructure Research Group, Marinus Boezem, and stanley brouwn were inspired by developments in the sixties such as space travel, the interest in the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, and the use of air in architecture. It is striking that sensory experiences and scientific approaches are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, a synthesis takes place in the artworks they produced.

About the author

Julia Mullié (1994) studied art history at the University of Amsterdam. She worked a an assistent-curator at de Vleeshal in Middelburg. Julia now works as a freelance writer and consultant for different media and funds, among which the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht and the magazine Art Monthly. Next to that, she is a research-assistent for dr. Marga van Mechelen.