Artist Tom Sachs really loves space, the exploration of it, and the vessels that make such a thing possible. Sachs also loves DIY. Infatuated by the Apollo Project, his sculptures over the years have mimicked various lunar model parts to stellar effect. In 2007, using a full-scale Lunar Excursion Module, a huge mission control panel including multiple screens, a couple of "astronauts", bricolage and a convivial yet tenacious imagination, Sachs managed his own idiosyncratic mission to the moon. It was a fun excursion, particularly for the astronauts, who had booze, music and an eclectic library to distract from any tedium the immersive art instillation may have presented. At Los Angeles' Gagosian Gallery, crowds watched as the collective effort achieved liftoff, touchdown, a walkabout and a spot of lunar surface drilling into the gallery floor. Mission accomplished. Contrary to NASA's funding needs, Sachs' own version of NASA with its handmade hodgepodge of cost-effective bricolage has taken him very far indeed.
In 2012 at New York's Park Avenue Armory, Sachs took the same methods, tools and mission control for a more ambitious project, Space Program 2.0: MARS. There, characters Lieutenant Samantha Ratanarat, model maker, astronaut and iron-worker, and Commander Mary Eannarino, astronaut and carpenter, partook in an plywood-plus expedition to Mars in front of a live audience and a camera crew. The journey to the big red planet was recorded by Sachs' enfant terrible collaborator, film director Van Neistat, (one half of the Neistat Brothers whose previous work, iPod's Dirty Secret and Bike Thief have garnered newsworthy notoriety).
Zeitgeist Films' A Space Program, Neistat's first feature, is much less a documentary about Sachs' work than a chaperone art piece. Following a montage of workshop material how-to videos accompanied by resonant narration, our heroines climb aboard the cassette and candle equipped module and liven up their mission with booze, bickering, a potent tea ceremony and some Mars terraforming courtesy of poppy seeds scraped from bagels.
To best absorb A Space Program, one must not strain the cerebral hemispheres into concentrative rigidity, but instead relax the mind into a pliable sponge. The 1969 lunar landing has imbued human consciousness with a sense of wonderment that has Sachs and Neistat spellbound still. Sachs' mission to Mars asks, "Are we alone?" A Space Program plays with myriad questions, not least the seemingly infinite capabilities of steel and plywood. Hijacking mankind's giant leap with a DIY resourcefulness makes A Space Program intriguing viewing and succeeds in challenging all other leaps of faith with witty invention.
