March 3 - April 2, 2016

Nahum – Evocations of a Forgotten Voyage

Have you been to the Moon? Do you remember how the electric blue of Earth emerges from the landscapes of dunes and rocks? Maybe you have forgotten it all.

Evocations of a Forgotten Voyage is a project by artist Nahum that explores the possibilities of producing an intimate experience about a trip to the Moon. This project addresses the limitations of such travels that were once reserved to a group on twelve men that walked on the lunar surface.

Over a period of one year, Nahum, a trained hypnotist, executed several hypnosis sessions to audiences in a series of theatres in Mexico and the United Kingdom. Here he planted a false memory in people’s minds, a fiction of a personal trip to the Moon. Such memory was carefully crafted with the guidance of astronomers and geologists. During the hypnotic sessions a soundscape was included to reproduce actual sounds of a rocket launch that would aid the fixation of this impossible memory. Likewise, some participants were asked to wear EEG headsets to record their brain activity whilst the false memory was being planted on their minds.
Afterwards, Nahum worked closely with a radio astronomer in the South of England where took the resulting brainwaves data and sent them as radio signals to the Moon by using an Earth-Moon-Earth communication system. Once the signals touched the Moon’s soil, they bounced back to Earth only to find out that the original brain waves appeared heavily distorted by some kind on Moon patina.

Later, the memories that visited the Moon as brainwaves were transferred to metal plates using a technique called siligraphy. When the printing process started, something unexpected happened: the printing revealed complex images that appear to be loose parts of the actual Moon surface. Using image comparison software we are finding those apparent surfaces on the actual Moon. After all, maybe those memories are more than fiction, perhaps we are just starting to remember our past cosmic travels.

Nahum is an artist and musician based in London and Mexico City. His work focuses on using the perspective that space exploration can give us to generate wonder and a sense of re-enchantment.

He is a founding member of musical ensembles such as the “Goldsmiths Electronic Orchestra” and “Orchestra Elastique”. Since 2007, he has performed and exhibited his artistic work in UK venues including the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Southbank Centre, Battersea Arts Centre and The Place in London, e Basement in Brighton, and Laboratorio Arte Alameda and the Fonoteca Nacional in Mexico City.

From 2008 to present, he has been an associate artist at The Arts Catalyst, a renowned arts and science agency in London. Here, he organises KOSMICA, an international series of galactic gatherings about outer space, arts and culture. Furthermore, he currently chairs the Technical Committee for the Cultural Utilisations of Space inside the International Astronautical Federation in Paris. Within the committee, he plans cultural space policies for space agendas at an international level. Morevoer, Nahum has been appointed as one of the curators of the digital arts biennial TransitioMx to be hold in Mexico City in September 2015.

In 2014 Nahum was recognised as a Young Space Leader by the International Astronautical Federation for his cultural contributions to outer space activities.
Currently he is the director of the first space mission of zero gravity by Mexican artists in collaboration with the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Russia. The results of this project have been exhibited in Mexico, Slovenia, Russia and the USA.