Space is the Place

This catalogue for the traveling exhibition Space Is the Place (whose title refers to a movie about the super-experimental and influential jazz musician, Sun Ra) takes an inspired look at the theme of space exploration. Encompassing the concept of infinite potential, as well as historical outer-space successes and failures, it features installations, paintings, works on paper, and sound and video works made during the past 15 years by Laurie Anderson, Nina Katchadourian, Oleg Kulik, Julian LaVerdiere, Aleksandra Mir and Damian Ortega, among others, and investigates global attitudes from the time the Soviets launched Sputnik nearly 50 years ago to the era of the explosion of the Columbia space shuttle in 2003. While the featured artworks are united by the theme of outer space, the open-ended parameters of the subject also invite consideration of the technological, environmental and sociopolitical forces affecting life on earth today.