tender orbits (PAM-D)
2024
Beaconsfield Gallery, London
Hand-chiseled tactile sculpture made from off-cuts of wood, decommissioned sun lounger from a resort, used plastic packaging, leather from repurposed artwork, hand-stitching on plastic.
tender orbits is an ongoing series of installations and performances that probe on our lacking relationality to space debris. Despite having enabled communication, monetary transactions, warfare, weather tracking and space exploration, orbital debris remains detached from our visual, material and sensuous understandings. In the installations visitors are invited to touch and hold tactile 'space junk' sculptures, which are accompanied by textual narratives of de-orbited and fallen space debris. The work is part of an ongoing PhD research at the Royal College of Art.
Wall text:
January 21st, 2001 PAM-D falls into the desert in Saudi Arabia ‘After nearly eight years in orbit, a PAM-D (Payload Assist Module - Delta) upper stage re-entered on 12 January 2001 with one main fragment being recovered in Saudi Arabia. The stage had been undergoing rapid catastrophic orbital decay since the first of the year..The evening (~1900 local time) re-entry over the sparsely populated desert was observed, and one large fragment was found about 240 km from the capital of Riyadh.’
(From NASA Orbital Debris Quarterly News 2001, Volume 6, Issue 2)
Please take a seat and hold the object.
