The “Moonwalker Training” workshop, an extension of Analog Astronaut Training, focuses on sustainable energy use during stressful situations by facilitating body terraforming. This unique workshop combines physical and mental exercises for aspiring Moonwalker(s).

Moonwalker(s) Training workshops educate and inspire participants to prepare their bodies for an improved life on Earth, drawing from Analog Astronaut Training experiences.

Each workshop lasts approx. 160 minutes, allowing immersion in the experience, originating from a previous project – “Astronaut(s) without a spaceship” which explores the motives and consequences of the space race, with ethical, political, and environmental implications.

During my training in the Analog Astronaut Training program in Poland in August 2022, I realized the importance of own sustainable energy use and conservation. The physical and mental exercises that are learned at the workshop helped me to better support my AAT crew and contributed to a successful lunar mission.

2023. Moowalker(s) training, Artistic dictionary of public space, Open art studio and City Gallery Striegl, sports hall “Zeleni brijeg”, Sisak, Croatia

2023. Moowalker(s) training, Artistic dictionary of public space, Open art studio and City Gallery Striegl, Sisak, Croatia

The concept of this work is related to space exploration/exploitation. One of the focuses is also the term terraforming (a hypothetical process of atmospheric, temperature, topographic, or ecological adaptation of a celestial body to the conditions of life on Earth) and its use when talking about planet Earth in relation to other heavenly bodies. There is a discussion about terraforming the Moon or Mars, but soon we will need to “terraform” Earth.
In the past 10 years, space exploration and traveling have again become a big topic with many discussions, from statements like we need to be multiplanet species to asteroid mining. There is a noticeable increase in this space race, not only between nations but also between private companies.
What is the logic behind the new space race? For whom will this “new world” on Earth or some other astronomical body be built? How far can the exploitation of resources on and around Earth be stretched?
My interest in “space exploration” began around 2019 when I stumbled upon a document about the establishment of a Centre for Space and Innovative Technology in my hometown – Sisak.
As part of my first reflection on my hometown’s space agency, I have done and documented several performances realized in my hometown’s forest near the former Iron factory and the Oil Refinery.

2021 performances were realized in Sisak-Caprag’s forest near the former Iron factory and the Oil Refinery

Thinking about possibilities where space exploration and exploitation can lead us, I received the opportunity to participate in a program called Analog Astronaut Training Centre as part of ESA’s ILEWG EuroMoonMars initiative.

2022, EMMPOL Poland, Analog Astronaut Training Center, Poland

In August 2022, I was part of Analog Astronaut Training in Poland. I saw my participation there as a weeklong performance, in a way infiltrating the (all-scientist) crew, but also as an observer who learns from fellow scientists and records everyday events and experiments on the site.

2022. EMMPOL Poland, Analog Astronaut Training Center, Poland

2023. Project PIAQ5454: Do we need art in space? , Gallery VN, Zagreb, Croatia

2022. Astronaut(s) without a spaceship, gallery Palmera, Bergen, Norway

technical description

year: 2022/2023

storytelling installation, which includes:
12 x digital print, 100 x 150 cm
6 x digital print, 30 x 20 cm
13 x print on textile – flags, 150 x 225 cm
video, loop, 2’48’’

Steady movement is a mixture of forest and bird datasets with a tendency for slow reshaping. Containing one symbolically fixed element (tree-forest) and three symbolically movable elements (birds), it shows desire for movement but under fixed parameters.

The result of two opposite forces (movement and steadiness) is an in-between state, a rift into the unknown, but also a possibility for transformation into something new.

2020. Drei Tage bis zum Ende der Kunst, WHW Akademija, Galerija Nova, Zagreb, Croatia

“The exhibition Drei Tage bis zum Ende der Kunst is the result of a seven-month journey within the WHW Akademija module Conversation about the Trees (conceived and led by Ana Dević). Focusing on issues such as resistance, resilience, and collectivity, the module used the motif of trees and forests as a metaphor through which main lines of inquiry branched out into different topics and artistic practices, as found in the Kontakt Collection.”

https://akademija.whw.hr/posts/on-the-other-side-of-the-closed-door

https://akademija.whw.hr/posts/drei-tage-bis-zum-ende-der-kunst

https://akademija.whw.hr/posts/conference-of-the-birds

technical description

year: 2020.

installation, which includes:

video, loop,01’06’’

7 x stickers, digital print, 14 x 14 cm

2 x stickers, digital print, 9 x 9 cm

10 x plants

program used: RunwayML, model used: StyleGAN, datasets used: Caltech-UCSD Birds 200 (CUB-200) – 6033 images and Forest (RunwayML forest dataset) – 2330 images

2020. Drei Tage bis zum Ende der Kunst, WHW Akademija, Galerija Nova, Zagreb, Croatia

📷 Damir Žižić; Vlad Brăteanu; Ivana Tkalčić

Images have always been with us, including the image of the world. At different times and in different places there are different images of the world, and that is why history and comparative anthropology are not just descriptions of events and practices, but representations of events and practices.

The notion of “the real” is even more debated in an era when the highly-optimized interaction loops, a personal news feed, bots, automatically generated content, fake news, the possibility to immerse into augmented reality, and ever-getting smarter AI is challenging the very nature of “reality” and shaping new conditions of human perception.

Information, Communication, and Technologies (ICT) are affecting who we are, how we socialize, our concept of reality (our metaphysics), and our interaction with reality, but how are the ICT shape human perception (while we humans shape technologies) and into what?

Worldwide human life is redirected to the online world, where a new worldview is being produced by making, watching, and circulating data in enormous quantities.

Networks have redistributed and expanded the viewing space, but most of the digital platforms that we use every day are not only collecting the information about us as users but also are filtering all the accessible information according to „our“needs, and showing us the material they think would be of our best interest.  We, as users may have the feeling of the useful personalized everyday landscape, individual decision making, and freedom of choice, but all that can be part of our own personal bubble world, a comfortable illusion.

The problem with bubble vision is that users are in intellectual isolation, in a so-called “parallel information universe”, which feeds itself. As a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles.

The information and the image that we see are becoming our perception of the world, our point of view, and understanding of reality – the foundation for thought and action.

2024. myriad, re|thread, Reactor Hall R1, Stockholm, Sweden

📷Happy Wilder, Martynas Justinevicius

https://www.kulturpunkt.hr/content/o-zaigranosti-i-ozbiljnosti-tehnologije

technical description

video installation, which includes:
4 x synchronized videos, loop, 09’30’’

The project was created in collaboration with scientists from the Joint Research Centre, European Commission in Ispra, Italy; Ian Vollbracht, Stephane Chaudron, Nicole Dewandre, and curator Freddy Paul Grunert.