An Everywhere of Silver
2009, 16mm film transferred to HD video, 10min 29s, stereo audio

Credits:
Direction and Production: Mai Hofstad Gunnes
Cast: Louise Peterhoff and Nadia Lafi
Director of Photography: Anne Misselwitz
First Assistant Director: Goro Tronsmo
Costume: Mai Hofstad Gunnes and Mika Kunimoto
Make-up: Mika Kunimoto
First camera assistant: Rasmus Sievers
Light design: Henning Gebhardt
Editor: Rudolf Blanke
Vibraphone: Masayoshi Fujita
Cello: Simon Breth

An everywhere of silver

2009
Two channel video installation
Part I: 16mm film transferred to HD video, 10min 29s, stereo audio
Part II: SD Video, 18min

In 2008, I followed a group of aerospace engineers called The Mars Society Germany during their rocket launch campaign, done in preparation for their future Mars balloon mission, Archimedes. The two-channel video installation An everywhere of silver and the sculpture They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars are works generated from that project.

In the 16mm film An everywhere of silver, the border between documentary and fiction blends as footage from a rocket launch is crosscut with a story staged by two female dancers. The second video in the installation shows archival material from the test vehicle Miriam, as it detaches from the rocket in space and falls back to earth. The footage is filmed by cameras on the rocket and from boom cameras attached to Miriam. The two women represent the two experimental spacecrafts Miriam (Main Inflated Reentry Into the Atmosphere Mission test) and Regina (REsidual Gas INflation test for Archimedes). The spacecrafts were launched as a test in preparation for their future Mars balloon mission planned for 2017. By fusing the spacecraft with dancers, the film discovers personification at the heart of rocket science.

They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars shows two vitrines, one containing the wreck of Regina, recovered by The Mars Society, while the other display case is empty, as Miriam was never found. The wreck of Regina and the absence of Miriam function as relics from the film An everywhere of silver. The project also presented a series of collages, among them Petals, Metals, Sepals, which combined the images of ballet dancers with those of satellites and rockets. The collages reflect on the difference in scale between humans and space crafts, through dance and flight.