Museo Aerosolar Cátedra Goldenstein – FADU UBA

El Museo Aerosolar es una construcción espacial efímera que promueve un estado de conciencia a favor del cuidado del medio ambiente al utilizar energía natural y bolsas de plástico recicladas como material de proyecto.

Iniciado en conversaciones entre Tomás Saraceno y Alberto Pesavento en 2007, el Museo Aero Solar se desarrolla en el espacio formado entre participantes humanos y no humanos en los simples actos de cooperación y reutilización de bolsas de plástico para producir colectivamente una escultura aerosolar, capaz de moverse en el aire, utilizando sólo la energía del Sol.

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El MAS gira la mirada hacia el aeroceno: una nueva era geológica centrada en el cuidado de la atmósfera. Es una invitación a cambiar nuestras actitudes más dañinas hacia el planeta y de promover una sensibilidad ecológica con la posibilidad de futuros más limpios.

En el 2013 por invitación del área de educación del Parque de la Memoria, el MAS fue realizado con la cátedra Goldenstein -Proyectual (CBC FADU UBA)- por primera vez. Desde entonces cada año se realiza una nueva construcción con cientos de estudiantes trabajando unidos en un solo equipo.

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Agradecemos especialmente a Joaquín Ezcurra y Carlos Almeida de la comunidad Aerocene por compartirnos sus conocimientos para ampliar los límites de esta maravillosa experiencia y a nuestros queridxs Paulina Gramón Vidal y Felipe Ramírez Vilches por las bellas fotografías y el video.

Museo Aero Solar Cuarachi

Leer este artículo en español

Today we dive deep into the history of the Museo Aero Solar (MAS), reliving one of the most amazing MAS ever built, due to its unique and remote location in the Peruvian jungle, the harsh environmental conditions that surrounded its birth and, above all, the resilience of the community that participated in its construction. Allow us to bring the story of the Museo Aero Solar Cuarachi back to life.

In June 2014, a state oil pipeline burst in the department of Loreto, Peru, contaminating the waters of the Marañón River, on which the locals had built their livelihoods for centuries. The lack of media coverage of this ecological catastrophe left the native communities with little hope of receiving help from the government.

Artists Helga Elsner Torres and Ramiro Wong decided to take action and reached out to the well-established and active Museo Aero Solar community in Peru.

Helga and Ramiro, who knew the technique of building the tetrahedron-shaped sculpture, together with a small group of artists and activists travelled to the remote village of Cuninico. With the aim of documenting the impact of the oil spill in collaboration with the Cocama community, which was mostly affected, they took on the challenge of collectively building a Museo Aero Solar.

Helga, in dialogue with Aerocene Community, recalls the experience:
“We travelled with a good friend, Ramiro Wong, from Lima to Iquitos, and from there by boat 2 hours to Nauta. From Nauta we sailed for 12 hours in a small boat, until we finally arrived in Cuninico. There, a family welcomed us in their house and gave us food for the days we stayed working on the project. In a community that lives on natural resources like this one, after the oil spill, it was very difficult to find uncontaminated fish to eat. However, what little they could get, they shared with us. The whole village was willing to help us, they even built us a raft for the Aero Solar Museum! Cuninico, in spite of all the misfortunes it has gone through, is the place with the most beautiful landscape, close to the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve and with the most generous population I have ever met. Although due to the weather conditions, we were not able to meet the objective of documenting the disaster in the time foreseen, we decided that it would be optimal to donate these sculptures to the community. In this way, they would have another tool to document and denounce the oil spill. We would also continue to raise awareness about this news in other places.

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That is why Ramiro, Frances Munar Aparicio and I exhibited the experience of the Aero Solar Museum in Cuninico at the 21er Haus Museum in Vienna, Austria, together with the artist Tomás Saraceno. The people who attended the exhibition and the conference were astonished: “How is it possible that, with the utmost impunity, these disasters continue to happen? Who manages to make a solar sculpture in the middle of the Amazon?

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In the process of putting together an Aero Solar Museum, the remote Cocama community of Cuninico came together sharing with us the miseries of environmental pollution, but also the joy of building together an immense sculpture made of reused plastic bags on which they wrote their stories documenting the dangerous impacts the dumping had had on the surrounding ecosystem, and on their own lives.

All photographs are by Helga Elsner, whom we thank for contributing to the Aero Solar Museum story!

Museo Aero Solar Orquestando Ciudadanía

Somos efímeros

por Ángela Bonavita
Chascomús, 20 de diciembre de 2021

En septiembre empezamos a juntar, cortar y pegar bolsas de plástico en distintas instituciones de Chascomus, para lograr un gran museo Aero solar de 12 x 36metros.

Hace unos días ese Museo Aero Solar se convirtió en sala de concierto y en bastidor de niñxs, jóvenes y adultxs.

Ver la obra terminada nos invita a reflexionar sobre nuestro consumo. Cada unx de lxs que participamos en el armado aportamos una, dos o más bolsas y entre todxs juntamos (sin muchas complicaciones) las 4.000 que lo conforman.

¿Cuántas de todas esas bolsas habrán tenido más de 15 minutos de uso? ¿Cuántos negocios todavía insisten en usar plástico y cuántos otros lo cambiaron?

También nos gráfica un dato de color (bastante oscuro), este museo es el segundo más grande del mundo pero aún así, sería llenado con la basura de Chascomus que se genera solamente en TRES días.
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Somos efímeros, como el aire que entra y sale del globo, mutamos constantemente por el contexto o por cambios internos, como la forma del museo. Al mismo tiempo que cada unx de nosotrxs, somos parte de un todo, como cada bolsa que juntamos y reciclamos o tiramos. Pero vivimos en una sociedad tan inmersa en la rutina que pocas veces dimensionamos el impacto de nuestros actos y agarramos la bolsa del almacén o de ropa así sin mas. La mía + la tuya + la de ella…las cuatro mil.

Que lindo es usar el arte y el juego para frenar y cuestionarnos, compartir y aprender de y con tanta gente este proyecto.
El lunes una niña escribió una frase sobre la emergencia ecológica en el globo y me dió mucha certeza de que a su generación le llevaría bastantes meses más, juntar bolsas de plástico para armar su gran museo aero solar.

Maristella Svampa en Proyecto Ballena

El Antropoceno es la era del colapso. Y la palabra “colapso”, a su vez, sintetiza una realidad ilustrada por eventos extremos cada vez más frecuentes: destrucción de ecosistemas, incendios en la Amazonía, tormentas de fuego, animales sacrificados. Mientras nos acercamos a lo que podría ser el fin de la pandemia, la deuda ecológica todavía se está acrecentando. Acecha el riesgo de la parálisis de la acción, la parálisis de la imaginación política. ¿Cómo orientarnos hacia un camino post-extractivista, recalibrar nuestro lugar en el planeta e incluso en el cosmos? Las respuestas aparecen desde la militancia y el diálogo pero también desde el arte y la literatura, espacios que pueden abrir portales que señalan un horizonte utópico, un hedonismo alternativo, otras formas de vivir sobre la tierra.

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Aerocene at OpenCOP – COP26, Glasgow, Scotland

In late 2021, the Aerocene community was invited to take part of OpenCOP, a unique co-created virtual conference that facilitated exploration, broader ecological awareness, and collective solidarities. Initiated by Forum for Earth, OpenCOP was carried out in parallel to COP26 UN Climate Change Conference that took place in Glasgow, Scotland, from November 10th to 12th, 2021.

Over a 50-hour period, discussions and performances were live-streamed, alongside videos, digital art, and projects, accessible through the state of the art Sparkle online platform, bridging projects and voices beyond those present in Glasgow to the adjacent potential of decentralized and inclusive futures

The Aerocene community set up a virtual space within the OpenCOP Imaginarium Space. The Aerocene online space at OpenCOP allowed visitors to participate on an online screening room broadcasting the Aerocene Pacha Flights live transmission, interact with the online Aerocene App and Float Predictor, and chat through video-link with other participants.

OpenCOP brought together an emerging intergenerational solidarity of earth stewards from every discipline and bio-region around the world who poured their skills, knowledge, and passions into weaving healthier, more inclusive futures, bridging their work around local and global sustainability and regeneration projects.

Activists, system hackers, thought-leaders and organizations came together to co-create this online collective envisioning and sensemaking space. You can re-live all the conversations held at OpenCOP via Forum for Earth website.

Floating above and below: Aerocene Frozen Lake, Rummelsburg, Berlin

Sunday, 14th of February 2021

Rummelsburg, Berlin, Germany

52.4946° N, 13.4800° E

TIME ON AIR: 360′

 

Aerosolar Pilots:


Lorenzo Malloni

Irina Bogdan

Thomas Charil

Alberto Vallejo

Giulia Ambrosini

Diego Alejandro Puerto Martinez

 

After a week of very low temperatures, a rare opportunity has been made possible by especially harsh winter conditions in Berlin this year: a sharp radiant sun has uncovered above the city and its frozen waterways, allowing thousands of people to walk on thick ice. 

Early in the morning, a group of six Aerosolar Pilots borrowed three Backpacks from the Aerocene Foundation and experienced a flight free from carbon emissions on top of the frozen Rummelsburg lake in Berlin. 

The vast white surface of the lake had stopped any of its motions, no water ripples, boats remaining still in their positions, as decontextualized artefacts on a deserted land. Terrestrial beings are now bashfully walking where they were not allowed to only a day before. A spontaneous situationist environment has come to life, an empty, vast stage where the public and performers merge, activating a place for renewed shared experiences. 

As soon as the black Aerosolar sculptures get inflated on the ice with only air, the power of the sun lifts them off instantaneously – amplified by the albedo reflection effect on the white, frosty lake. Immediately, their movements in the thin air generate a focal point attracting the public and participants onto the wide white stage. 

The Aerosolar Pilots share their floating experience with whoever is around, passing the fluctuating rope and initiating a bonded, bonding slow dance between humans and the solar airborne creatures.

The transitory stage hosts the first act of a participatory piece in which the sun, the winds, human and non-human are all protagonists. 

Although the stunning beauty of the three hours experience, bathed in the wintry sun, it is not easy for the aeronauts to forget that under that thick layer of ice, down to the bottom of the lake, the contamination of several decades of industrial waste has made impossible life conditions for many autochthonous species. 

As stated by the Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde: 

“The combination of high chemical contamination with persistent organic and inorganic chemicals, toxicity and specific substrate composition, makes a natural repopulation scenario for the improvement of the biological diversity extremely improbable”

When leaving the lake, the aeronauts’ wish is that the mirage-like white blanket that has covered it for the day, allowing for them to fly aerosolar on top of it, will be a reminder of what lies beneath it, at its very bottom, where man-generated pollutant particles have layered in-depth; that our waste does not only end up in the air that we breathe, but also in the very populated hidden underworld of our lakes, rivers and seas, all very close to us, but perhaps often forgotten merely because we can´t walk on them.

Photography by Aerocene Foundation and Tom Klingbeil, 2021, licensed under CC by Aerocene Foundation 4.0

Fly with Aerocene Pacha – Connect, BTS – Live streaming

Connect Saturday, April 25th at 3PM in Berlin, 10AM in Buenos Aires, and 10PM Seoul for a live screening of Fly with Aerocene Pacha, a project by Tomàs Saraceno for Aerocene Foundation as part of CONNECT, BTS, curated by Daehyung Lee. CONNECT, BTS is a global curatorial practice, a series of projects realized by a range of artists and curators, whose work resonates with BTS’ philosophy.

The culmination of over 20 years experimental work, Fly with Aerocene Pacha took off January 28th 2020 in the salt flats of Salinas Grandes, Argentina, becoming the first ever balloon-like structure to lift a human into the atmosphere, allowing its pilot to float free, without the use of fossil fuels, helium or lithium –becoming the most sustainable flight in human history and setting six world records across two categories.

Named after Pacha Mama, the Andean concept that connects what lies below and above the Earth’s surface with the furthest reaches of the cosmos, uniting space and time, Aerocene Pacha worked to bring together indigenous peoples and diverse communities through a common goal, raising voices in unison against harmful lithium extraction practices in northern Argentina.

Now, screen Pacha’s journey through films commissioned from Gastón Solnicki, Maximiliano Laina, Julia Solomonoff for Canal Encuentro, and Diego Belaunzarán Colombo and Matías Arturo Tarrés.

Be lifted by the sun and carried by the wind in your own virtual aerosolar sculpture by downloading the Aerocene App. Within the app is the Float Predictor, a global forecasting system that predicts flight paths of lighter than air sculptures circling around the globe free from CO2 emissions, which was developed by the Aerocene Foundation in collaboration with MIT.

Air pollution is intrinsically linked with the COVID crisis -one of the biggest obstacles in recovery from the disease being a person’s lung health. Let’s begin an era free from fossil fuels, lithium and other pollutants, together, as we experience the flight of Pacha from our homes. Join the Aerocene era and follow future flights @aerocene!

Aerocene Festival 2019 – Movements for the Air, Munich Landing

During the first weeks of September 2019, Aerocene Community assembled in Munich for Aerocene Festival, an occasion of entanglement and attunement with the atmosphere and each other.

In celebration of the numbers of clouds sensed and the thickness of thoughts developed during the days of gathering, community member Dalia Maini has written a poetic report reflecting and acknowledging all who made the festival possible, whether as a talk or workshop host, the public, community members and dreamers! 

Stay Attuned, further developments of the experience in Munich to follow!

READ THE COMMUNITY REPORT HERE
READ THE FESTIVAL PROGRAM HERE

In connection to the festival, Aerocene Foundation with Studio Tomás Saraceno published

AEROCENE
Movements for the Air
Munich Landing

This book contains the embedded energies of the Aerocene Festival 2019 collectivities and their respective speculations for zero-carbon futures. It is an invitation to all who are open to receiving them and embarking on the experimental movements toward realising the ever growing horizons of Aerocene’s evolving aerosophics. For a renewed vision of Earth’s planetary futures; In Air We Trust.

READ & DOWNLOAD THE BOOK HERE

INDEX

Aerocene Community —Aerocene Manifesto
Anton Biebl — Foreword 
Tomás Saraceno — Meditative Mo(ve)ments for Atmospheric Re-attunement
Susanne Witzgall — The Art of Relating Differently
Emanuele Braga — Common Intelligence
Beate Engl — Powered by: The Dilemma of Art in Outer Space Ayushi Dhawan — Obituary: A Farewell to the Oriental Nicety (1986–2012) Long Gone but not Forgotten…!
Joaquin Ezcurra — Aerosolar Dérive: Aerocene Community in Argentina
Erik Bordeleau Love is in the Air — Airquakes for the Aerocene
Avenir Institute — Aeropolitical Manifesto: Suprapolitics in Aerocene Jasper Julius Humpert —83AQI The (In)Visibility of Atmospheric Ubiquity 

Editors: Tomás Saraceno with Alice Lamperti and Roxanne Mackie (Aerocene Foundation)

Design by ATLAS Projectos

Editorial Office: Studio Tomás Saraceno

Photo Editors: Studio Tomás Saraceno

Translation: English-Deutsch Eva Scharrer & Eva Wilson;
Deutsch-English Daniel Spaulding

The book has been printed on paper Oikos (115 and 300 g/m2), made with 50% pure environmentally friendly certified FSC® fibres and 50% recycled fibres.

First published in Berlin in 2020 by Aerocene Foundation Hauptstraße 11-12 10317 Berlin Germany;
Printed in Berlin, Germany by Ruksaldruck. 

ISBN 978-3-00-064721-5

This project was funded by Aerocene Foundation, Studio Tomás Saraceno and City of Munich, Department of Arts and Culture.

Movimento Ar livre! – Aerocene rising in São Paulo, Brasil

Join Aerocene!

On 20th October at 10:30 am, Aerocene Community will reunite in São Paulo for a collective action supporting climate change awa(i)reness towards a movement for free from fossil-fuel futures.

If the weather allows it – a sunny day and no winds – we will be ON AIR completely free of carbon emissions in front of MASP, Av. Paulista, 1578 – Bela Vista, São Paulo – SP, 01310-200.
++++ Please scroll down for English version ++++
Junte-se ao Aerocene! No dia 20 de outubro, às 10h, a Comunidade Aerocene se reunirá em São Paulo para uma ação coletiva em apoio a um movimento por um futuro sem combustíveis fósseis. Se o tempo permitir – um dia ensolarado e sem vento – estaremos no AR sem emissões de dióxido de carbono no vão livre do MASP, Av. Paulista, 1578 – Bela Vista, São Paulo – SP, 01310-200. São Paulo é uma cidade de recordes. Sendo a maior cidade do hemisfério sul e ocidental, sua geografia mudou tão rapidamente no século passado que por muito tempo foi impossível mapear sua extensão. Hoje a imigração tem taxas menores de crescimento do que no passado e o tecido urbano está se consolidando, o Google Street View explorou a maioria dos cantos da cidade, mesmo em áreas que a classe média considera muito arriscadas para uma caminhada. Todas as manifestações de um novo regime climático estão presentes aqui: o movimento pelo direito à moradia está crescendo; os processos de integração esbarram contra um quadro colonial muito presente e as políticas de bem-estar estão longe de ser um padrão. Não é de estranhar que o congestionamento urbano tenha produzido uma zona extremamente poluída, entre os vários índices alarmantes a mencionar está o das partículas em suspensão da poluição atmosférica, que se situa, em média, entre 20 e 25 microgramas por metro cúbico – mais do dobro do considerado seguro pela Organização Mundial de Saúde. Em todo o estado de São Paulo, a poluição do ar tem sido citada como responsável pela morte de cerca de 100 mil pessoas entre 2006 e 2011 por doenças respiratórias. No entanto, morar em São Paulo pode ser uma experiência agradável para quem consegue compensar o estresse da megalópole acessando as inúmeras estruturas – por uma preço – ou se permitindo uma melhor qualidade do ar através das experiências filtradas de construção equipada e carros refrigerados. Independentemente da origem social, viver em São Paulo significa confrontar-se com as consequências de um modelo de crescimento que requer uma enorme quantidade de recursos para manter um regime hiperconsumista. Quando essa voracidade encontra os piores programas políticos, alimenta uma extração irresponsável de recursos, um consumo selvagem e criminoso que consome em ritmo insensato um dos tesouros mais preciosos do Brasil — uma área natural impressionante que abriga comunidades indígenas que lutam para proteger a biodiversidade contra lucros privados e corporativos. Queremos decolar em São Paulo para ampliar nossos horizontes e ver o patrimônio natural acima da periferia urbana, pois o Brasil abriga 70% das espécies animais e vegetais listadas no mundo e é o país com o maior número de povos indígenas isolados. Aerocene vai flutuar no ar da cidade poluída para discutir um novo regime econômico que se opõe ao desmatamento amazônico e celebrar o grande esforço que as comunidades indígenas estão fazendo para proteger o ecossistema para todos nós. Se você quer se tornar um aeronaut conosco, por favor, mantenha-se atualizado sobre as ações do aero solar – confira nossos canais de mídia social. Sigue a ação coletiva em São Paulo em WHATSAPP: https://chat.whatsapp.com/IotVtgH6BiuCCgoatgjgB0 TELEGRAM: https://t.me/joinchat/NuAp5BIFpTOgxKmH2w_ioQ FACEBOOK EVENT. https://www.facebook.com/events/1020037395011943/?active_tab=about Em direcção a outros futuros possíveis, vamos nos livrar dos combustíveis fósseis – junte-se ao Aerocene! ++++ English version ++++ Join Aerocene! On 20th October at 10:00 am, Aerocene Community will reunite in São Paulo for a collective action supporting climate change awa(i)reness towards a movement for free from fossil fuel futures. If the weather allows it – a sunny day and no winds – we will be ON AIR completely free of carbon emissions in front of MASP, Av. Paulista, 1578 – Bela Vista, São Paulo – SP, 01310-200. São Paulo is a city of records. Being the biggest city in the Southern and in the Western Hemisphere, its geography has been changing so quickly in the past century that for long has been impossible to maps its extensions. Nowadays the immigration is not racing anymore and the urban fabric is consolidating, Google Street View explored most of the corner of the city, even in areas that the middle class would mark too risky for a night walk. All the amplitudes of the new climate regime is a real struggle here: the movement demanding housing for humans is rising (a fight for a very basic human right); integration seems to crash everyday against a still heavy colonial framework and welfare politics are far from being a standard. Not surprisingly the urban congestion causes an extremely polluted area, among various alarming indexes worth to mention is the air pollution particulates averaging 20 to 25 micrograms per cubic meter — over twice what is deemed safe by the World Health Organization. Across the entire state of São Paulo, air pollution has been cited as responsible for the death of nearly 100,000 people from 2006 to 2011 from respiratory illnesses. Living in São Paulo is a more pleasant experience to anybody that can compensate the stress of living in the megalopolis accessing the countless – paid – facilities, or granting himself a better air quality through filtered experiences in decent building and refreshed cars. Living in São Paulo means confronting – regardless the social extraction – with the consequences of a growth model that demands a massive amount of resources to maintain itself in obligation to consumeristic pledges. When hunger reaches the worst political agenda it fuels an irresponsible extraction of resources, a savage and brainless overconsumption that chew one of the most precious treasure of Brasil, an impressive area of natural area which is home of indigenous communities that are fighting to protect the natural biodiversity of their habitat against corporative and private profits. We want to take off in São Paulo to broaden our horizons and see above the urban outskirts the natural heritages as Brazil is home to 70% of the world’s catalogued animal and plant species, and the country with the largest number of uncontacted indigenous peoples in the World. Aerocene will be floating in the heavily polluted city’s air to discuss a new economic regime that stands against the Amazon deforestation and celebrate the great effort that the indigenous communities are doing to protect the ecosystem for all of us. If you want to become an Aeronaut with us, please keep yourself updated with aerosolar actions – check our social media channels and: Follow the São Paulo collective action on WHATSAPP: https://chat.whatsapp.com/IotVtgH6BiuCCgoatgjgB0 TELEGRAM: https://t.me/joinchat/NuAp5BIFpTOgxKmH2w_ioQ FB EVENT: https://www.facebook.com/events/1020037395011943/?active_tab=about Towards other possible futures, we move free from fossil fuels – Aerocene unite!
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