FREE ENTRY / The Space Observatory - Creation in Zero Gravity

The Space Observatory invites artists to design a work in weightlessness that focuses on the visual translation of this state of weightlessness, while language fails to describe this particular state. The work will be developed during a parabolic flight in a zero-g Airbus and then presented in an exhibition on Earth. The purpose of this consultation is to choose the artist who will create the work.

The experience of weightlessness confronts the person who has experienced it with the impossibility of accurately describing it through language. There is something there that refuses thought as well as language, whether it is the inner sensation experienced by one's own body but also, sometimes, the incredible lightness of experiencing oneself differently. Professional artists are thus invited to propose works or creative devices that, in the light of the experience of weightlessness, can offer a plastic translation of the unspeakable. Taking into account the agravitic component, feasibility in light of the technical constraints of flight, attention paid to the question of the unspeakable, as well as the aesthetic bias adopted by the artist will be the main criteria considered by the artistic commission. The selected project will be announced from January 2025 and scheduled for the March 2025 flight campaign. Following its exhibition, the work will enter the contemporary art collection of the Observatoire de l'Espace and will be deposited at the Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse.