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Lot Essay
“Nature is within us, within our homes and within the way we live,” Saraceno recently reflected. “I try to think about that relationship all the time. . . . Art can become something other than what it is today—through collaboration, through something more hybrid, and by weaving relationships that cannot be created by any discipline alone” (in F. Nayeri, “At the Intersection of Art and Science Stands Tomás Saraceno,” New York Times, 20 September 2023). Born in Argentina and currently based in Berlin, Saraceno has developed a studio practice that pushes beyond the boundaries of art, drawing on research in fields spanning aeronautics, biophysics, ethology, and cognitive science. An architect by training, he has probed connections between the built and natural worlds over two decades through related and ongoing projects, among them Cloud Cities/Air Port City, to which GJ 581 e/M+1 belongs, and Aerocene, a movement for eco-social justice that encompasses sun-powered flying balloons and activism across the Global South. Saraceno has twice participated in the Venice Biennale (2009; 2019) and has held major solo exhibitions at venues including the Palais de Tokyo (Paris; 2018), the Museo de Arte Moderno (Buenos Aires; 2017), and the Roof Garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York; 2012).
“I cannot wait to see its next dimension,” Saraceno says of Cloud Cities, “between the humor of people, planets, objects, animals, plants, planetary dust…my senses now enlarge, become rebuilt in this and other solar systems…toward a mental ecology, a social ecology and environmental ecology.” This cosmo-ecological consciousness underpins the origins of the present work, which takes its name from a Super Earth exoplanet of the same name (GJ 581e) in the Libra constellation that was identified in 2009. The Gliese 581 planetary system drew headlines in 2007 with the discovery of the first Super Earth in a habitable zone (GJ 581c), with a temperature believed capable of supporting Earth-like life. Although its habitability is now discounted, the discovery sparked tantalizing questions about the possibilities of life across the universe. “The Cloud Cities should help to facilitate a dialogue and are therefore real on Earth or in orbit,” Saraceno explains. “In the way that stars become more real to someone who uses them for navigation, this model for reality is capable of a perception that becomes tangible as we construct it through dialogue…the medium is the message many times” (in “Conversation between Tomás Saraceno, Marion Ackermann, Daniel Birnbaum, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Udo Kittelmann,” Cloud Cities, Berlin, 2011, p. 42).
This experimental, intergalactic futurism informs the concept and design of GJ 581 e/M+1, whose modular, polyhedric design—planes of plexiglass held in place by metal threads—invites viewers to imagine themselves living in an airborne “cloud city.” The sculpture nods to the work of past visionaries, notably the geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller, the lightweight and tensile structures of Frei Otto, the inflatable architecture of Ant Farm, and the Hydrospatial City of Gyula Kosice. Saraceno also counts among his sources the ecological theories (and capitalist critique) of French philosopher Félix Guattari, Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, and the sensory and embodied architecture of spider webs (which inform his project, Arachnophilia). “The true utopia is when the situation is so hopeless and impossible to resolve within the coordinates of the possible that you have to invent a new space purely for survival,” he posits, quoting the philosopher Slavoj Žižek. The ambition of GJ 581 e/M+1 is to conceive of precisely such a world. “Utopian dreams drive us towards the impossible,” Saraceno declares. “Utopia needs to include everyone and everything, and we all need the courage to dream, to share the responsibility of not only one, but many possible futures. . . . We are all riding on a small speck of cosmic dust on board this planet Earth with its many cities flying along with it! Dust from spiral filaments of galactic clouds…from homo sapiens to homo evolutis?” (ibid., p. 42).
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
“I cannot wait to see its next dimension,” Saraceno says of Cloud Cities, “between the humor of people, planets, objects, animals, plants, planetary dust…my senses now enlarge, become rebuilt in this and other solar systems…toward a mental ecology, a social ecology and environmental ecology.” This cosmo-ecological consciousness underpins the origins of the present work, which takes its name from a Super Earth exoplanet of the same name (GJ 581e) in the Libra constellation that was identified in 2009. The Gliese 581 planetary system drew headlines in 2007 with the discovery of the first Super Earth in a habitable zone (GJ 581c), with a temperature believed capable of supporting Earth-like life. Although its habitability is now discounted, the discovery sparked tantalizing questions about the possibilities of life across the universe. “The Cloud Cities should help to facilitate a dialogue and are therefore real on Earth or in orbit,” Saraceno explains. “In the way that stars become more real to someone who uses them for navigation, this model for reality is capable of a perception that becomes tangible as we construct it through dialogue…the medium is the message many times” (in “Conversation between Tomás Saraceno, Marion Ackermann, Daniel Birnbaum, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Udo Kittelmann,” Cloud Cities, Berlin, 2011, p. 42).
This experimental, intergalactic futurism informs the concept and design of GJ 581 e/M+1, whose modular, polyhedric design—planes of plexiglass held in place by metal threads—invites viewers to imagine themselves living in an airborne “cloud city.” The sculpture nods to the work of past visionaries, notably the geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller, the lightweight and tensile structures of Frei Otto, the inflatable architecture of Ant Farm, and the Hydrospatial City of Gyula Kosice. Saraceno also counts among his sources the ecological theories (and capitalist critique) of French philosopher Félix Guattari, Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, and the sensory and embodied architecture of spider webs (which inform his project, Arachnophilia). “The true utopia is when the situation is so hopeless and impossible to resolve within the coordinates of the possible that you have to invent a new space purely for survival,” he posits, quoting the philosopher Slavoj Žižek. The ambition of GJ 581 e/M+1 is to conceive of precisely such a world. “Utopian dreams drive us towards the impossible,” Saraceno declares. “Utopia needs to include everyone and everything, and we all need the courage to dream, to share the responsibility of not only one, but many possible futures. . . . We are all riding on a small speck of cosmic dust on board this planet Earth with its many cities flying along with it! Dust from spiral filaments of galactic clouds…from homo sapiens to homo evolutis?” (ibid., p. 42).
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park