Our Interplanetary Bodies

• Main Author: Marie Siguier
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: École du Louvre 2019-12-01
• Series: Les Cahiers de l'École du Louvre
• Subjects: sublime; cosmos; ecosophy; phenomenology; vivant; art/science
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/cel/4139

Tomás Saraceno’s exhibition Our Interplanetary Bodies (2017) examines our relationship to the cosmos from a phenomenological and cosmopolitanist perspective. The vast recreation of a cosmic landscape, the work appears like a hybrid and artificial phenomenon combining organic elements (dust, meteorite seeds, arachnids, spider webs) and new technologies (screens, bioacoustic devices, algorithms). While the sublime Burkean modernist was an illusionist and attempted to distance the observer from a terrifying nature to have him feel terror, elevation or rapture, the installation encompasses the individual and sends him back to his own physical and cognitive experience, as well as to an renewed experience of space and senses through immersion in a “cosmos programme” that nevertheless produces a feeling of elevation faced with what Lyotard called “the unpresentable”: the absolutely great, the absolutely powerful.