I wanted to bring the USS Enterprise 1701 A into my work, that ultimate symbol of future, discovery, science fiction, and naïve self-overconfidence and beam it straight into my art. But not sleek and heroic. Instead I assembled it out of painted marble fragments, toy parts, bright plastic, and found objects. Glued together like a collage that tells both my childhood and my abysses.
My Enterprise takes off, far away from a burnt-out, used up Earth, that wicked old black ball. On its surface crouch little silhouettes, gears, scraps of industry, Weyland-Yutani echoes and hollow humans. It’s a kind of garbage planet, a symbol of everything we have devoured. Hanging at its side is a small grey moon, almost sad, almost irrelevant. Properly dead. No time left.
And up on the bridge: a cheerful little child figure, dancing. That was crucial for me. Because for me it represents the joy of discovery, the urge to see something new, without cynicism, without war, without a business plan. A child that simply dances while the ship is already leaving. For me it’s that strange blend of hope and bitter irony:
We fly away because we ruined the Earth, and yet someone is still dancing. Innocent like morning dew.
On the Carrara marble base I scratched in a series of symbols: heart, gender signs, target, star. For me they are a kind of visual grammar, a tiny text, like the golden Voyager record, only mine could be titled: Why We Fled the Earth. A simple explanation, as childlike as a picture book, and yet harsher than any scientific report. And shorter.
When the work was shown in Milan (FaceArt) and later in Caserta (Human Rights), I noticed how people first laughed. Bright plastic, Enterprise, little kid on top, almost like a toy. And then came the lump in the throat, when they looked at the blackened Earth. That’s exactly what I wanted: first play, then pain.
Fear..at least for one’s own offspring.
For me this piece speaks of the risks of civilisation. That we can invent and build everything, but also burn it all down. That we play games which, in the end, become real wars. That we carry love and hope, but also destruction and escape. My Enterprise turns into a ship of flight, and the child dancing on its bridge, that’s our last bit of curiosity, our last scrap of joy, maybe our final reason to fly anywhere at all.
I was, and always will be, a hardcore Star Trek fan.
Carrara 2010
