Halil Altindere. Space Refugee

About

First exhibited at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k) in 2016, the project takes an ironic distance from the current refugee crisis, positioning outer space as a haven for those displaced.  At the installation’s core is a film focusing on the first Syrian Cosmonaut Muhammed Ahmed Faris, who went on a seven day Journey to the Soviet space station Mir in 1987. Further portrayed in a social realist style, the exhibition and film tracks Faris from USSR hero, to supporter of the democratic opposition to Assad, to his current life as a refugee in Turkey. Presented within an architectural environment conceived for its exhibition in the gallery, the film combines factual interviews with NASA scientists, air and space law specialists, and architects about their fictional visions of life on Mars. Accompanied by a virtual reality video, the project quickly expands to a questioning of the plausibility of human life, and a proposal for a refugee colony, in space. Ending with the words “We will build space and I will go with them to Mars, where we will find safety and freedom. Where is freedom on earth? There is no dignity for humans on earth,” the work becomes simultaneously hyperbolic and realistic, critiquing xenophobic rhetoric, while remaining hopeful for the emancipation from oppression.