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Number 11, year 2021
Revista Catalana de Museologia

Mars. The Red Mirror

Genesis of an Exhibition

Publication date: 17/11/2021


Narrative

Publication date: 17/11/2021

Narrative

Abstract

Why Mars? An exhibition on Mars could only make sense if it connected with the great dilemmas of a present-future that has become radically strange to the human species without forgetting the fascination that the fourth planet in the solar system has exerted over the centuries.

This article summarizes the work process and the vicissitudes of an exhibition that was fully affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The exhibition “Mars. The Red Mirror” has been a complex project, and ended up being one of the most visited exhibitions at the CCCB.

“Imagination will often take us to worlds that never were. But without it, we will never go anywhere.”

Carl Sagan

 

Why Mars?

This was the first question I had to answer at the start of the project in February 2019. The challenge posed to me by Judit Carrera, director of the CCCB, was obvious—an exhibition on Mars could only make sense if it connected with the great dilemmas of a present-future that has become radically strange to the human species without forgetting the fascination that the fourth planet in the solar system has exerted over the centuries.

The gestation period lasted about nine months, during which the structure and the first contents of the womb were sedimented. The title was the initial compass and arose with relative ease. The mirror metaphor was ideal for attempting to reconstruct a cultural history of the red planet, from antiquity to the present day. Mars allowed an open and multidisciplinary approach to an object (or hyperobject) that is both god, planet, and symbol of the civilizing process and strata of consciousness that define our ways of understanding and inhabiting the world. This suggested a great history(1) that was not univocal and could structure the multiple stories that intertwine when we think of Mars as a mirror of our own essence.

Admitting that human history cannot be understood without incorporating the history of the universe was a first certainty linked to the problem of the temporal and spatial scales in which we are immersed with only a partial awareness of its true implications. The current consensus of modern cosmology places us in an expanding universe born with the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, and the fact that we have become a geological force capable of drastically altering the biosphere over the next centuries confronts us with another spatial and temporal scale difficult to assimilate. This double cognitive earthquake is the conceptual framework that protects the stories we discover in the Martian mirror and allows us to rethink from the beginning of agriculture to the interconnected crises posed by the Anthropocene.

Mars, then as the god of war but also as a telluric deity associated with the protection of crops, in a time arc that goes from Mesopotamia to Rome, through Egypt and Greece. Mars in the origins of myth, prayer, and magic and in the geocentric cosmos of Claudius Ptolemy that defined our worldview for fourteen centuries. Mars as a decisive planet in the advent of the Copernican turn, and since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, turned into a red sun around which all the trends of the time orbit. Mars as a favorite planet of science fiction, from The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells to the Kim Stanley Robinson trilogy. Mars as a mirror of our current situation at a time when the desert is advancing and the forests are receding, with a decimated planet on the brink of the sixth extinction. And finally, Mars as a possible or impossible plan B for a humanity that continues to be immersed in psychic, economic and military pathologies and at the same time dreams of the first settlements on the red planet and in the colonization of the solar system, while the new space economy is postulated as the engine of the fifth industrial revolution.

An integral matrix

Turning these ideas into an aesthetic experience was no easy task.

Each of the languages that make up the exhibition genre in theory requires equal treatment. This involves crafting a script that contemplates them all in a creative process that always reserves unexpected twists. Operations begin in one of the most intangible spaces of the mental laboratory. This place(2) (or no-place) where the exhibition begins to be imagined—from the light and sound created by desirable atmospheres, through the images that will form the backbone of the audiovisual discourse, in the arduous exercise of the texts essential to articulate the visit to reach the hard core constituted by the exhibition material itself and the challenge of capturing a spatial design that contains all the languages, harmonizes, and sustains them.

The transition between the imagined exhibition and the final one is intense and complex. The creative process requires that aesthetic decisions be at the service of a staging that pursues the proverbial capture of public benevolence or, in other words, the suspension of disbelief. That is the reason to be of the premise of an asceticism that, ideally, is born of emotion and surprise, the unalterable components of all knowledge. A purely rational exhibition is never enough. In this sense, it can be said that the working methodology of “Mars. The Red Mirror” begins by defining the most immaterial languages such as lighting and sound, scripting an audiovisual narrative, which is done following the semantic milestones of the itinerary.  As these languages dialogue, in the kitchen of writing the search for the right tone for the different levels of reading takes place. The asepsis of an encyclopaedic style did not seem appropriate for the treatment of the texts that present the three main areas of the project (“Mars in the Ancient Cosmos,” “Science and fiction of the red planet,” and “Mars in the Anthropocene”) nor for the texts that synthesize each sub-area, module, or sector. It was necessary to find a specific style that would allow a story in a “temperate zone,” where the idiolects and slangs of the experts give way to the always difficult charm of a writing guided by literary imagination. However, the distance between what is desirable and what is possible is never narrow, and rewrites are imposed as an inevitable toll. As the creative process progresses, languages begin to integrate, and there is always good news to feed this sensitive space where the imagined exhibition begins to resemble the final exhibition. It is a path of advances and setbacks, of exasperating blockades and unconvincing solutions. And yet it never disappoints the confidence we place in persevering work beyond all resistance. Then comes the joy of reaching an “I got it”—or of an “I got it” reaching us—and then we see the surprises that the red mirror had in store for us. Among these, a matrix lavish enough to allow for exciting analogies and bifurcations. It is this matrix created with “undecided matter”(3) that allowed to assume the multiple operations implicit in a project of this nature.

The pandemic as an unknown land

When everything was ready for the different work teams to begin to shape the exhibition as it had been conceived, the pandemic broke out. This posed a major challenge that did not substantially affect the conceptual framework of the exhibition, but it did affect the working conditions in which it had to be developed and the management of the planned objects, books and manuscripts.(4) That is, an unknown situation for a project that also tried to explore an unknown land: as if the red mirror served to bring us closer to the roots of our bewilderment following the stages that an archaeology of consciousness reveals to us since the first astrologers and astronomers observed a “red star” as the enigmatic exception of the celestial vault.

And so, a metamorphosis inspired by Ovid unfolded, but also present in Ray Bradbury when he recreates the myth of Proteus, imagining the Martians as creatures who change shape, never revealing their true identity. The prologue required a three-dimensional “ghost” that expressed all the faces and transfigurations we projected on Mars—from the figure of Nergal, in the Babylonian pantheon, to the amplified image of an extremophile. In addition, it had to be suggested that the visit to the exhibition would have multiple voices and readings. That is why the first person is used to give voice to a Martian meteorite that would start and culminate the itinerary. And then the intention to place the public in a remote past(4) that can become a deep future and an unattainable present, with the help of science and fiction in all its speculations about time and consciousness.

            We are already on Mars because Mars has always been here.

.

The general formalization of the exhibition was evolving through numerous tests and corrections, not to mention the original map that sometimes coincides with the territory. It is difficult to pinpoint all the phases of this trip, but looking at it with the perspective of time, it could be said that it came to fruition with a premeditated inauguration(5) that coincided with the arrival of American, Chinese, and Arab missions to the red planet. This led to added media interest and the creation of a favorable environment for the good reception of the project. Despite the elapsed time (and the doubts that persisted until the last moment) I am still amazed by the remarkable response from the public. The cliché that reminds us that true satisfaction lies in the creative process and in all the learning it entails is a truth that is complemented by the happiness that comes from the acceptance and enjoyment of people of almost all ages. All this to state that the aesthetics of the reception continues to change, as the functions of curator in the coming years will.

A choral work

Conceiving, formalizing, and producing exhibitions such as “Mars. The Red Mirror” is a highly complex choral art in the end. This project would not have been possible without the admirable work of Miquel Nogués, Montse Novellón, Mònica Ibáñez, Susana Garcia, Josep Querol, Neus Moyano, and Alex Papalini, from the Exhibitions Department of the CCCB, directed by Jordi Costa; without the solvency of Mario Corea and his production unit; without the talent of Marta Llinàs, Cesc Solà and Sebas Bonet in the architectural and graphic design of the exhibition, the inspiration of Nico Roig with the soundtrack and the creativity of the team of audiovisual directors of the CCCB, integrated by Juan Carlos Rodríguez, José Antonio Soria, and Toni Curcó. They all took on the challenge of creating a unique exhibition artifact amid exceptional conditions. They were the crew of a voyage that also had the experience of Diego Bravo in the treatment of 3D images, the mastery of Meritxell Campos in scientific illustrations, the ingenuity of Álex Posada, and Alberto Granda in the interactive on an imaginary topography of Mars, the generosity of Joan Fontcuberta in his interventions for the third area and the consequent work with neural networks of deep learning of Taller Estampa, in the installation on “Martian species.” But my gratitude also extends to all the departments of the CCCB that participated with special enthusiasm in the production, dissemination, and amplification of the project. And to the scientific advisors and institutional allies who believed from the outset in the power of radiation that an exhibition on Mars promised.

As I write these lines the pandemic is going through its fifth wave, fires are devastating Mediterranean forests and the IPCC(7) has published a devastating report on the magnitude of the wound we are inflicting on the planet Earth or Gaia, if we admit its condition of self-regulated living entity. There are not many reasons for optimism, but it is clear that pessimism, cynicism, and nihilism are luxuries that we cannot afford. If anything confirms the creation of complex cultural projects it is the categorical imperative not to give up, and to be able to see the small successes that take place when we focus on the need to change our ways of making worlds; when we glimpse the birth of an integral consciousness, the gifts of a participatory mind, the treasures of an active imagination—a new way of inhabiting this planet and thinking of all the non-human intelligences (plants and animals) on which the future of life on Earth depends, and the legacy we will leave to future generations. There is no planet B, regardless of the fact that we are traveling to Mars in the near future. Preserving our only known home is a huge task that also affects the future of cultural creativity in the 21st century. The quote from Kim Stanley Robinson at the end of the exhibition is a possible summary of our situation: “We fight again in the matrix of a new world, this time in alien truth.”

 

Juan Insua, August 2021

 

Notes


(1)

The notion of Great History or Great Story can be found in recent works such as La Gran Historia de Todo by David Christian (Crítica, Barcelona 2019), but it is an approach already present in Outline of History, published by H. G. Wells in 1919-1920 and also at the Annals School, founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch in 1929. An interdisciplinary view that discusses the precepts of classical historiography by creating communicating vessels between the human sciences and the sciences of the world. A Great Story that does not deny its status as so, with all the doubts, omissions and controversies that this entails.

(1)

The notion of Great History or Great Story can be found in recent works such as La Gran Historia de Todo by David Christian (Crítica, Barcelona 2019), but it is an approach already present in Outline of History, published by H. G. Wells in 1919-1920 and also at the Annals School, founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch in 1929. An interdisciplinary view that discusses the precepts of classical historiography by creating communicating vessels between the human sciences and the sciences of the world. A Great Story that does not deny its status as so, with all the doubts, omissions and controversies that this entails.

(2)

There are different speculations about this “place.” In theory, it should be noted that this is an approach opposed to Kandinsky's “white cube.” It could be defined as a latent space or a black box, where all the operations of the imagination would be possible, including the flashes of the photographic or eidetic memory. Nurturing and preserving this space throughout the creative process does not avoid dealing with the material conditions and constraints of an exhibition hall, but it allows to discover little-traveled paths. Sometimes what seems impossible only takes a little bit longer.

(2)

There are different speculations about this “place.” In theory, it should be noted that this is an approach opposed to Kandinsky's “white cube.” It could be defined as a latent space or a black box, where all the operations of the imagination would be possible, including the flashes of the photographic or eidetic memory. Nurturing and preserving this space throughout the creative process does not avoid dealing with the material conditions and constraints of an exhibition hall, but it allows to discover little-traveled paths. Sometimes what seems impossible only takes a little bit longer.

(3)

The concept comes from an essay by Jorge Luis Borges where he refers to the “undecided matter” that makes up the suburbs of a city but may also be appropriate to insist on the plasticity of this latent space where ideas and images arise and are transfigured to define the process of formalizing the project, also influencing the creation of the catalog, the website and the audio guide.

(3)

The concept comes from an essay by Jorge Luis Borges where he refers to the “undecided matter” that makes up the suburbs of a city but may also be appropriate to insist on the plasticity of this latent space where ideas and images arise and are transfigured to define the process of formalizing the project, also influencing the creation of the catalog, the website and the audio guide.

(4)

The intense work carried out with the generous collaboration of local museums and institutions allowed the contents planned for the first exhibition area (“Mars in the Ancient Cosmos”) not to be excessively affected. Just remember as examples the statues of the Mars Balearicus from the Catalan Museum of Archaeology and the collections of the Archaeological Museum of Ibiza and Formentera, the armillary spheres of the Maritime Museum or the bibliographic treasures of the CRAI Reserve Library (University of Barcelona) and of the Spanish National Library.

(4)

The intense work carried out with the generous collaboration of local museums and institutions allowed the contents planned for the first exhibition area (“Mars in the Ancient Cosmos”) not to be excessively affected. Just remember as examples the statues of the Mars Balearicus from the Catalan Museum of Archaeology and the collections of the Archaeological Museum of Ibiza and Formentera, the armillary spheres of the Maritime Museum or the bibliographic treasures of the CRAI Reserve Library (University of Barcelona) and of the Spanish National Library.

(5)

“We are still immersed in our most distant past. (…) Mad, we attend an ancient ceremony whose splendors celebrated the calm constellations and natural forces that are unleashed and annihilated; we had sailed into a forgotten era of our prehistory, in the other direction of space and time. Upward action and the future, identical backward reaction, commotion in the foundations.” This quote from Michel Serres was located at the beginning of the first area next to a screen where the public accessed in real time the Martian day measured in suns, and the weather conditions on the red planet. The daily update was completed with other basic data such as the size of Mars, the distance from the Sun and the Earth, the moons, the lower force of gravity, the composition of the atmosphere, and so on.

(5)

“We are still immersed in our most distant past. (…) Mad, we attend an ancient ceremony whose splendors celebrated the calm constellations and natural forces that are unleashed and annihilated; we had sailed into a forgotten era of our prehistory, in the other direction of space and time. Upward action and the future, identical backward reaction, commotion in the foundations.” This quote from Michel Serres was located at the beginning of the first area next to a screen where the public accessed in real time the Martian day measured in suns, and the weather conditions on the red planet. The daily update was completed with other basic data such as the size of Mars, the distance from the Sun and the Earth, the moons, the lower force of gravity, the composition of the atmosphere, and so on.

(6)

The pandemic forced a change of schedule in the CCCB's exhibitions scheduled for 2020. “Mars. The Red Mirror” was due to open at the end of November, 2020, but was postponed until February 2021, coinciding with the arrival of the Perseverance at the Jezer Crater, broadcasted live from the CCCB Hall, a few days before the inauguration of the exhibition.

(6)

The pandemic forced a change of schedule in the CCCB's exhibitions scheduled for 2020. “Mars. The Red Mirror” was due to open at the end of November, 2020, but was postponed until February 2021, coinciding with the arrival of the Perseverance at the Jezer Crater, broadcasted live from the CCCB Hall, a few days before the inauguration of the exhibition.

(7)

For more details, the report of August 9, 2021, and the reports issued previously can be found at the following link: https://www.ipcc.ch/.

(7)

For more details, the report of August 9, 2021, and the reports issued previously can be found at the following link: https://www.ipcc.ch/.

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