million books

a draft for a new solar system

 

by Jens Masmann

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

80 pages A4

stapled on the right edge

 

open edition, signed

 

40 euros plus postage

 

 

a draft for a new solar system

 

In 2022 the whole world seems wrecked. Global warming, unjust north-south divide, an ongoing pandemic and a misanthropic and inhuman war in Europe. With these impressions in plain view I set up the mind game of restarting from scratch and of developing a draft for a brand-new solar system, which would give us the opportunity to undo gross mistakes and to return to a paradisaic or even pre-paradisaic state of the earth.

The visual draft for the new solar system is mimicking and paraphrasing popular astronomical imagery, which has been trending a lot since the first images through the James Webb Telescope hit the media. The setups for the pictures are built in an improvised studio surrounding and are probing basic and classic photographic processes in a playful way, like for example the positive - negative depiction of subjects, inserting the typical grey checkered photoshop background or the play with flat or deep spatiality. The studio arrangements are pushing banal objects into a new context and are loading them with a new meaning. Popular terms from the field of astronomy - like for example Big Bang, Dark Matter, Black hole or Milky Way - are the stooges for my setups. Common astronomic and photographic clichés deliver further substance. The viewer of the „Draft for a new Solar System“ is held in-between following the surreal narrative or the pseudoscientific lines of the story and debunking the cheap fakes. The story is building up a purely emotional credibility, which can be revealed easily. The emotional impact of the project is also fueled by topics like the starry night, the sun set and by the use of candy colors.

The body of work also questions the overall credibility of the medium photography and tries to address the difference between an emotional disposition to accept visual statements and the cognition of an objective fact.