Introduction

Tomás Saraceno (born 1973, in San Miguel, Argentina) is convinced that art can change the world. He studied Art and Architecture at Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, before relocating to Europe in 2001. Other stages in his education were the Städelschule in Germany (under Thomas Bayrle) and Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia (under Hans Ulrich Obrist and Olafur Eliasson). Today, Saraceno lives and works in Berlin, where he and his team work on exhibition projects.

The 43-year-old Tomás Saraceno views his work as a process of constant artistic and multidisciplinary research that pursues the idea of a “realizable utopia”. Inspired by physical and biological phenomena such as the thermodynamics of the atmosphere or the web structures among spiders, he works together with biologists, engineers or architects to create large-format sculptures and installations. His works continue the visionary spirit of Constructivism, recalling the way that Kasimir Malevich or El Lissitzky dreamt of flying buildings. In response to global, ecological issues, Saraceno’s works are intended as models for future, sustainable life forms.

The exhibition at Wilhelm Hack Museum is the first comprehensive presentation of Tomás Saraceno’s Aerocene, or “Air era”. The project involves developing a wide array of flying sculptures held afloat entirely by thermals, without engines, gas, fossil fuels or solar cells. By day, the sculptures gain updraft solely through the heat of the sun, at night from the infrared radiation of the Earth’s surface. Initial trial flights have already taken place and pilots have been specially trained. During the exhibition period there will be a test flight starting at Berlin’s Schönefeld airfield and which will be streamed live.

Tomás Saraceno has collaborated with NASA, the French space agency CNES, and currently works with MIT. Initiated as an art project, the Aerocene vision swiftly developed with a group of artists, designers, scientists and activists into a forum for ecological problems such as environmental pollution or the reliance on fossil and carbon-dioxide based fuels. In the context of the current energy crisis, Tomás Saraceno and the Aerocene community seek solutions for sustainable travel, life and research to protect the Earth’s biodiversity in the long term. The latest invention, the Aerocene Explorer, is a control-line flight starter kit, enabling anyone to fly a sculpture without fuel or a motor, so that anyone can have a personal Aerocene experience.

Alongside several Aerocene sculptures, the exhibition also highlights the infancy of Aerocene research: the Museo Aero Solar, a massive sculpture made of reused plastic bags that will resemble a walk-through cathedral at the Wilhelm Hack Museum. The spherical sculpture is likewise a thermal flying object where the updraft is provided solely by solar heat. During the exhibition, the Aero studio will produce a new Museo Aero Solar on site.

The presentation is accompanied by large-format photographs, for example of outdoor flying actions, film footage, and another hands-on action: the Cloud Lab, a lab in which a new Cloudy House will be made. The Cloudy House is a three-dimensional vision of a life-world composed of a system of small modules. Here, too, we can witness how in his experimental works and sculptures Tomás Saraceno transposes network structures from nature onto architecture and real space and urban planning.