Cristina de Middel: The Afronauts
Lucy Davies, The Telegraph (08.06.2014)
(...) Following Zambia's independence in 1964, Edward Makuka Nkoloso, the founder and sole member of Zambia's National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy, initiated a mission to send the first African astronauts not only into space, but to Mars.
He set up a secret HQ near Lusaka, where he and his team studied the stars through telescopes and underwent gravity training by rolling down hills in oil drums. According to a contemporary newspaper report, Nkoloso claimed that Zambia's first rocket would contain 'specially trained spacegirl Matha Mwamba, two cats (also specially trained) and a missionary'. Eventually the project dwindled to an amusing hiccup in the country's annals.
"It attracted my attention precisely because my first reaction was, is it true or isn't it?" De Middel says, "and that is exactly the response I want from my audience when they see my work. I also like that it was an optimistic story about Africa, rather than the idea we more usually have of the continent. And it reminded me of the things I used to think about in my childhood, our relationship with the cosmos, how small we are. It was exciting to think I could make photography about it.
De Middel set about her project in the manner of a filmmaker, blending fact and fiction. "I thought, I have a story and I need images to support that story. On one hand I had the real documents and on the other I had images I wanted to create. As I saw it there are key Nasa images that we are familiar with – the flag and the footsteps on the moon. I tried to translate these and give them an African spirit."
"As I saw it there are key Nasa images that we are familiar with – the flag and the footsteps on the moon. I tried to translate these and give them an African spirit."
As well as finding props such as helmets (she used a glass dome from an old street light), she also commissioned her 92-year-old grandmother to help her make the spacesuits and the textile covering the rocket. 'She's pretty used to me asking her weird things. Sometimes she even says, OK, what's next?"
Alongside these new images, she placed images from her archive (including an 'alien' from Roswell, New Mexico), and included a mixture of genuine and faked documents pertaining to the story. "I used an original press cutting, but changed Edward's face. The letters are real letters I found on the internet, but I retyped them with an old typewriter. To make the story understood, I needed all these different parts."