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Text and Photography - Jan Franciszek Cieslak

The Last Man In Space /// Jan Franciszek Cieslak

The Last Man In Space

text & photography by Jan Franciszek Cieslak

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Mr. President is on the phone with The Moon

When on July 21, 1969 the crew of the Apollo 11 mission had successfully land-ed its Lunar Module, Neil Armstrong and ‘Buzz’ Aldrin came to be the first men to set their feet on the surface of moon. Since that moment, only 10 other people have repeated their achievement. Apollo missions had come to an abrupt end just three years later, with Gene Cernan be-ing the last person to walk the moon. The lunar landing is commonly considered to be an epoch shifting event, equivalent to the greatest achievements and discoveries in all human history, and in many regards it certainly was a “giant leap for man-kind”. But the visions of a new era to come, sparked by this spectacular suc-cess, turned out to be, by large, rever-ies. People in 1969 would have been prob-ably quite surprised and disappointed to hear that 40 years later there were to be no interplanetary journeys, human colo-nies on moon, or let alone on Mars, etc. What has remained from the short episode of moon excursions is just a captivating story for us, and for those few who were there, a memory of the unique and mysteri-ous experience of being, for a moment, the most remote soul in the universe. So what has suddenly pressured Americans to engage in such risky, costly and scientifically rather futile endeavor?

From the very beginning evaluating the im-portance of moon conquest was a bit prob-lematic. A mission of sending a man to the moon was not very beneficial from scien-tific point of view, to say the least. It was actually quite ludicrous considering the costs and risks involved. Neither it had any strategic or military signifi-

cance. But these aspects were never really pivotal for the Apollo program, what by the way was bluntly admitted. The Science Advisory Committee at president’s Eisen-hower office, created an ad hoc report on NASA’s ambitions, in which the authors stated: We have been plunged into a race for the conquest of outer space. As a reason for this undertaking some look to the new and exciting scientific discover-ies, which are certain to be made. Others feel the challenge to transport man beyond frontiers he scarcely dared dream about until now. But at present the most impel-ling reason for our effort has been the international political situation which demands that we demonstrate our techno-logical capabilities if we are to maintain our position of leadership. For all of these reasons we have embarked on a com-plex and costly adventure. And further:

Certainly among the major reasons for at-tending the manned exploration of space are emotional compulsions and national aspirations. These are not subjects, which can be discussed on technical grounds.1 President Eisenhower was far from enthu-siastic about this project, and he was quoted as saying that he will not “hock his jewels” for such adventures.

Yet less then a year later John F. Ken-nedy announced his support for the Apollo mission. The idea of sending a man to the moon certainly makes more sense if we see it as a symbolic act. Prospective po-

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litical benefits for USA were obvious and many – it would become the much desired and spectacular victory over Russians, who, at the time, were advancing their own space program. After all, it certainly is of no coincidence that out of all nations it was the Americans who have attempted and succeeded in this mission. Not many other countries were simply able or will-ing to deploy such great efforts into such a romantic endeavor, with no prospects for success other then promises of splendor. Americans however, were driven by a power-ful determination to seize any opportunity for adding to their yet raw mythology and to their pantheon of heroes. Above all, the moon conquest was an opportunity for constructing some extremely powerful nar-ratives, and without a doubt, Americans have recognized this opportunity correct-ly. The space race was actually a symbolic battle for semiotic domination, and from that perspective, there was indeed a great prize to scoop – an ever-powerful myth to utilize for own purposes. Since it was the Americans who won, it was them who had a chance of harvesting this myth. They did it in their own way, that is, through turning it into a pop-spiritual spectacle. And perhaps it was the actual manner, in which landing on the moon has been com-municated to the stunned world, that was the greatest victory of US space program, because it has successfully released this event into the sphere of mass-imagination, and of further relentless cultural combi-nations.

Few years earlier, on the day of April 12, 1961 it was the Soviets who had their moment of glory, their own ‘giant leap for mankind’. Yuri Gagarin was the first man to orbit the Earth in a space vessel. He was The First Man in Space. This was an achievement that had put Russians far ahead of Americans in the space race. But if we compare these two competing triumphs in terms of appeal, of charm, of fascina-tion, then the Russian success seems dull and pale. Russians have announced their victory with a proud matter-of-factness. To them, the space journey of Yuri Gagarin was mainly a proof of the Soviet prosper-ity, technological progress, and perhaps, of their peaceful world-domination. But

Yuri Gagarin

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they did not discern this success as an opportunity for creating a fascinating story. Yes, there were splendid celebra-tions, parades and flowers, poems and statues. But their propaganda was naive and unpalatable. All that tedious So-viet grandeur had always stood in a stark contrast with the sparkling brilliance of American storytelling.

What is perhaps most amazing to me, is that sending a man to the moon has escaped the category of avant-garde, successful scientific experiment, and has spread into the domain of imaginary, of emotional, even of nearly erotic or religious sort of mass experience. I think that it happened mainly because the images of this event immediately became cultural super-icons, and the narrative they conveyed have per-fectly accorded with the core American myths. The story of a lunar astronaut is certainly very compelling on its own; it is a story of a man who pushes his limits in order to challenge The Nature itself, to achieve what seems unachievable, to reach The Other World. His true arche-type is not of a scientist, God forbid. He is a Romantic hero, a figure from the Friedrich’s painting, an individual who looks ahead and only ahead, with desire and nostalgia at the same time. Moonscape becomes a metaphysical landscape. This narrative of metaphysical conquest was certainly strongly present in American culture beforehand. The prototype of the lunar astronaut is a lonesome cowboy who wanders through deserts and prairies to reach The West – a promised land of dust and death. It is a hostile and inhabitable territory, and the cowboy is detached from his environment much like the astronaut does not belong on the surface of moon. He is always alone. Overcoming all obstacles he struggles singlehandedly, just to get where no one has yet. Perhaps that is why the prevalent perception of the story of lunar conquest, is not that of a story of collective effort, but of One Man, whose struggle is contemplated by The Whole World.So in terms of its lyricism, this event was born out of the great narratives of the American Romanticism. It is at once an affirmation of humanistic spirit, technological determinism, and of romantic

individualism.

Ladies and Gentlemen, here and now, Mr. President is on the phone with The Moon! When one thinks of the moon conquest, one must immediately think in powerful im-ages. This is significant in itself - for instance the Yuri Gagarin’s first journey into space, which was an event of similar historical magnitude, does not have such captivating, symbolically intense iconog-raphy to be associated with. And indeed, the footage documenting the landing on the Moon is so strong and so beautifully executed, as if it was a directed mas-terpiece of fiction, done with incredible

Buck Rogers

pietism, perfect orchestration of details, stunning choreography. Almost every image from that material radiates with nearly religious fascination and emotional ten-sion. The countdown leading to alighting and the slow-motioned movements of the as-tronaut create an atmosphere of mass hyp-nosis for the audience. Every act, every gesture, every word spoken, seems to have an eternal meaning, to deliver a message of philosophical significance, of meta-physical verity. When I was reading about the technical details of the Apollo 11 mission, I was amazed by how much atten-tion was directed at ensuring the proper transmission of the event to the public. Besides performing the necessary technical activities, astronauts spent most of their time on the moon on taking pictures and filming each other, which was all broad-casted immediately back on Earth. Every great culture has its own forms of telling the stories of glory and heroism, of great dramas and tragedies. For Greeks it was the theatre, for post-Napoleonic France it was the monumental historical paintings, for us, perhaps, these stories are most effectively carried in form of live broad-casting, in form of news and advertis-ing. I think that the aesthetics of modern media can also be examined in the context of the past traditions of highly idealized iconography, and especially of the Roman-tic painting and religious iconography. That is because both in news and in com-mercials we could recognize the techniques of manipulation and means of artistic ex-pression typical to these forms. Televised transmission of the moon landing pioneered these aesthetics in many ways. The func-tion of this stunning spectacle created for the masses, has surpassed its design. It certainly was not a mere presentation of facts, despite its documentary form. Rather then that, It has become a carrier of a beautiful fantasy, and an impulse for the transfixed audiences to engage in a strange ritual of viewing and reviewing of the recorded messages. And being at once both news and advertising, these images have mixed with all the fictions carried by the expanding simulacrum of mass-cul-ture of the time.

In his theory of simulation, Baudrillard

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emphasizes the ever-presence of images in the age of mass communication and mass consumption. He argues that today we only experience prepared realities, and those in big part consist of compressed floods of images. These realities, he says, are purely a simulation – they are not a rep-resentation of anything but themselves. In his words, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum.2 According to Baudrillard, the reality falls victim to its own im-age. As the real event sublimates into its own perfected and enhanced representation, it dissolves, and it cannot be found back again. That certainly is a radical idea, but I think that there is indeed something very bizarre happening with those events, which were the most exposed, most closely observed by the public. The landing on the moon, Kennedy’s assassination, the attack of September 11 – as all these events have been recorded, they have become the most intensely studied seconds in the human history. The footage that has documented these moments instantly became iconic. Yet

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each of these events still raises con-troversy and sometimes an extreme dis-agreement as of what has really happened there. In a way, the hopeless and neurotic scrutiny to which we subject these images resembles the tragic quest of Thomas3 (the main character of Antonioni’s blow up) who tries to discover the truth in between the grains of a photograph. In case of the moon landing, there is a quite popular conspiracy theory, which questions whether the landing took place at all. A twist to the whole story adds a fact, that NASA has recently announced that the original tapes from the landing are nowhere to be found, and they could be lost somewhere in the vast archives of the institution. I think that this confusion, this impos-sibility of proving a mass-witnessed fact, has some poetic quality to it. It does put into question the realness of everything we experience.

But for me, landing on the Moon always had these two conflicting aspects of an event that simultaneously happens I two differ-ent places, in two contradicting reali-ties. On the one hand it happens in front of the whole world, it is a mass specta-cle, a symbolical and political overload. On the other hand, up there was someone, who for a moment was the most desolate human being in the whole universe, and an incomprehensible distance separated him from everything we know. The feel-ing of finding oneself in a deadly space that does not have any meaning, any ref-erence to the ‘real’ world, must remain the greatest mystery of those few people who have walked the moon. Gene Cernan was the last person who did. This is how he described his experience: (…) everything came to an abrupt stop. Instant silence reigned. (…) No pounding rocket, no vibra-tion, no noise. Not the song of a bird, the bark of a dog, not a whisper of wind or any familiar sound from my entire life. I was totally enveloped by such a thorough and complete stillness that I have dif-ficulty comprehending it even today. The only sound inside my helmet was my labored breath, and even that slight disturbance seemed so terribly intrusive that for a brief moment, I stopped breathing, too. Then there was nothing at all.4

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In the following photographs, I tried to translate the landing on the moon into a yet another story. Through the images of landscape, of a man, and of an artifact I wanted to once again convey the overworked myth, battered through all its iconography and coated in all its used up references. The images were selected for their quality of unfunny puns, of banal wisdom, a sham of compositional significance. Some of the pictures were taken in the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Other images are of the Amsterdam’s suburbs, an area that always provoked in me an uncanny feeling of abandoned sense. The person appearing in the rest of the photographs is Jasper. He is a concierge in my former academy, with whom I always shared an unarticulated friendship on the school’s corridors. I decided to remove him from his familiar daily functions and close him in the dark-ness of an empty studio. Under the single spotlight he reenacted for me the charac-ter of Gene Cernan, The Last Man On The Moon.

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(Endnotes)

1) The President’s Science Advisory Committee. (1960). Report of the Ad Hoc Panel on Man-in-Spa-ce. Washington, DC: NASA Historical Reference Collection.

2) Baudrillard, J. (1996). Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: Michigan Press.

3) Incidentally or not, also the name of the apostle who did not believe until he has seen

4) Cernan, G. (1999). The last man on the moon: astronaut Eugene Cernan and America‘s race in space. New York: St. Martin‘s Press.

Text and Photography - Jan Franciszek Cieslak

The Last Man In Space /// Jan Franciszek Cieslak