Chris Cokinos, University of Arizona professor emertius of English, wrote an account of the all-artist moon mission, dubbed Imagination 1, for Esquire UK.
Cokinos served as commander of the six-day simulated moon mission. The crew generated creative work shaped by the limitations and possibilities of life and culture beyond Earth in the Space Analog for the Moon and Mars, a high-fidelity center located on the campus of the University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2. The hermetically sealed and pressurized habitat includes living quarters, workshop, greenhouse, and a half-acre moon-Mars surface yard and terrain park, which is still under development.
Cokinos was joined on the mission by dancer/choreographer Elizabeth George, associate professor at the School of Dance; poet Julie Swarstad Johnson, Poetry Center archivist and librarian; and textile artist Ivy Wahome, MFA candidate in costume design and production at the School of Theatre, Film & Television.
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- Sewing in Space | Dancing in Space
The complete feature can be found here.
Here are a few excerpts:
I’m on the Moon. Or on a floor on the Moon. Actually, on a metal floor in a space analog building in the desert where I am simulating, with three other people, being on the Moon. We’re here to imagine space, keep house, and make art. We’re calling it Imagination 1. With me are my fellow University of Arizona colleagues: poet and archivist Julie Swarstad Johnson, dancer and choreographer Elizabeth George, and textiles artist and costume designer Ivy Wahome.
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But in extreme environments like space, we should demand more than just enjoyment. The very things said from and about the Moon can be strengthened with artistic technique. How we render the Moon will either replicate our worst tendencies on Earth or foster a respect for the time-worn beauty of this companion world. From simulating living in a lunar habitat to talking with astronauts who will fly around the Moon next year, I am obsessed with investigating how we can return to the Moon to live and work while using the tools artists know. Because those tools can help make life worth living.
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Ivy worked in the spacious TM, where on a metal work table she set up a sewing machine. Everywhere in the TM were bright fabrics and designs. She used a childhood blanket from Kenya on which to sew a tapestry—a symbolic mission log of sorts. She sewed on footprints drawn from our feet, a thickened hemisphere representing the Moon, silhouettes of cacti, astronauts, and more.
“I have vivid memories of falling asleep with this very blanket looking up at the Moon from my bedroom window,” she told me. “Besides, if I was to really go to the Moon, I would want to take something sentimental to me.”
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Liz wrote and edited video clips in the Crew Quarters, sitting on her sleeping pad, but mostly she resided in the Lung, where she slid, lifted, and lunged to the strains of “Moon River.” All week, she thought about “ballon,” she told me. “It’s the quality of ‘light-footedness’ in a dancer’s jumps. To appear weightless, suspended in space and connect with that ‘light space.’ The imagery of a balloon bouncing in space came to mind often as I was moving both in the habitat and on the rig.”
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During Liz’s excursion the day before, she danced as though she were on the Moon. She reported that sense of “ballon” as she did slow spirals down from leaps, possible only in lower gravity, real or simulated on the rig. The films I saw of Liz dancing in the 1/6th equivalent of Earth’s gravity made me dream of Artemis astronauts taking lessons from Imagination 1’s dancer: suited pirouettes beside core-sample drills.
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Only one human has gone to the Moon with formal training in the arts: Apollo 12 Moonwalker Alan Bean, who took art classes while he was a test pilot in the 1960s. When he returned from the Moon, he painted beautiful work of that exploration. How marvelous it would have been if he had done so while in space.