Axel Straschnoy‘s project Recovered Utopias has been selected by m-cult for its spring Collaborative Media Arts Projects.

Straschnoy describes the work as follows: “Recovered Utopias connects some of the youngest with some of the oldest residents of Maunula in a collaborative project that provides the younger generations with a new way of looking at the future.
For Recovered Utopias I will take advantage of the high proportion of senior inhabitants in Maunula as well as the presence of a high school specialised in science—and with an interest in art—to bring two very different age groups together. High school students from Helsingin Matematiikkalukio will interview retired people (possibly but not necessarily from the Helander Foundation’s old people home) about the perceptions and ideas they had of Martian colonisation as children. During the project, they will work to create images that answer to the descriptions they have heard. These images could be produced, for example, as films (animated or shot) or as 3D printed models. The working process is not linear but implies the active collaboration of the interviewed people in a context of constant discussion.
In the process of transmitting their vision of Martian travel, the older participants will transfer some of their sense of wonder and expectation, some of the ideas of the future as a brighter place that we all need to build together.”

Recovered Utopias is part of Destination Mars, a long-term research project on the ideological world surrounding current plans for the colonisation of Mars. The project allows us to rethink Earth ecology, our understanding of urbanism and housing (including the social constructs they presuppose), the rise of a technocratic mindset, and the encounter with radical otherness in a way akin to Columbus’s discovery of America in 1492.

For more information on m-cult please click here.

For more information on Axel Straschnoy please click here.