The Austromir Archive

Florian Voggeneder

Project description

On 2 October 1991, Franz Viehböck was the first Austrian cosmonaut to leave Earth. Together with the "Austronaut", numerous experiments set off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome to the MIR space station.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the only space flight with Austrian participation to date, the archive of the AUSTROMIR-1 mission will be opened in 2016. Florian Voggeneder suspects that the archive contains photographs as well as experiments. In fact, countless, barely labelled photo negatives and video tapes can be found, which Voggeneder secured and organised.

In addition to the photographs documenting the mission, there are also those that provide an unadulterated, personal view of the space programme by the researchers. Complex experimental arrangements, now obsolete, are developed and tested, packaged and sent to countries that have just broken away from the Soviet Union. Personal encounters arise between formal occasions, the outcome of which is not told.

In a first survey, Voggeneder's photographic gaze associates technologies, places, forms and functions. Detached from the actual local and temporal context, he curates his own speculative narrative around the development of a space programme. For a planned publication on the 30th anniversary of the mission next year, the archive is to be digitally recorded in its entirety.

As a photographic epilogue, Voggeneder plans trips to the archive's locations. What significance do the "pillar saints" space travellers have today? What effect have 30 years of opening and capitalism had? And where is Franz Viehböck's space capsule actually located?

Biography

Florian Voggeneder's photographic and installation works explore the relationship between people, signals and interference. He is currently researching historical and futuristic aspects of astronautical space travel in long-term projects.

In his now four-year exploration of topics on space travel, he again touches on body- and material-related themes with reflections on the effects of living in weightlessness or spacesuits to spacesuits. For the series "The Kepler Station", he went through a year-long preparation programme of the Austrian Space Forum to spend a month in the desert of Oman as a field crew member of the AMADEE-18 Mars simulation, where he photographically explored the boundary between fact and fiction.

Exhibitions, scholarships, degrees:

2007 # Horizons, 'Hopes', MDSM Oswiecim, Poland
2010 # Orchestra Visualisation 'Broadcasted', Brucknerhaus, Linz
2010 # Untitled (Light Installation), Best Off 10, Linz
2011 # Untitled (Light Installation), Schools of Art, Group show, Dresden, Germany
2011 # Untitled (Palimpsest), Best Off 11, Group show, Linz
2011-06 # Bachelor degree with honors, Timebased and Interactive Media, UFG Linz
2012 # 'ABSORPTION' Performance Visualization, Ars Electronica Center Linz
2012 # Infinite, Audivisual Performance, MediaOpera Vienna / Ars Electronica, Linz
2012 # Infinite, Audivisual Installation Best Off 12, Group show, Linz
2013 # Group Show 'Havanna – die Perle der Karibik?' Galerie Spektrum Linz.
2014 # Group Show 'signs of life', RAUM.SCHIFF, Linz
2015 # Residency, Perspektiven, Attersee/Austria
2015 # 'Linz am Attersee‘, Group Show, Attersee/Austria
2015-11 # 'Peer Group' permanent installation, Mistelbach
2016-12 # kristallin39, Solo Show, Salzamt Linz
2017-04 # Residency, Schloss Plüschow, Germany
2017-09 # Austronomy, Lecture, Ars Electronica Festival
2017-12 # Clouds, Performance, Linz, Trbovlje, Cologne
2018-02 # AMADEE18 Analog Mars Mission Crew Member, Oman
2018-06 # Curious Cartography, Lecture, AMRO Festival, Linz
2018-06 # The Kepler Station, Grad show, kunstraum Goethestraße xtd, Linz
2018-06 # Master degree with honors, Timebased Media, UFG Linz
2018-09 # Labore & Lebensräume, Group show, OÖ, Linz
2018-10 # Best Off 18, Group show, Linz
2018-10 # Solo show, 3KW Gallery, St. Martin
2018-08 # Working Grant Austrian Ministry of Education
2018-10 # Talent Grant for Photography Upper Austria
2019-06 # Solo Show, Perspektiven Attersee, Linz
2020-02 # Talente & Preise, Group Show, Linz
2020-08 # @ Home With, Lecture, LInz
2020-09 # Stay Awake, Group Show, Linz