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Report on the Construction of a Spaceship Module
Exhibition at the 5th floor of the New Museum

The visitor entering the fifth floor of the New Museum will find herself in the simulated interior of a spaceship. The exhibition offers an allegory of “anthropological science fiction,” where the exhibition space opens screens/windows to an estranged and exciting universe that dramatizes the cross-cultural translation involved in the presentation of art. The unique model evokes the challenges that contemporary artists experience in exhibiting works, or that curators come across in organizing exhibitions that stitch together diverse art, selected across generation, cultural context, personal narratives, and time.
On view in and around the spacecraft will be in three main section: artworks, commented archives, research and book projects using the screens as windows transmitting information from another world. Stepping off from the elevator into the Spaceship Module, the visitors will meet a digitized selection of artists and cultural archives inside the Archeology of Futures Lab (AFS). Originating from tranzit’s ongoing research projects, video screens will display particular moments and elucidate the motives of various forms of cultural production from Central and Eastern Europe, as they resonate in multiple geographies. The Main Communication Room (MCR) will be an interface that allows visitors to meet artists and cultural producers with whom tranzit have had an inspiring continuous or long-term collaboration—in one way or another, they’ve had a fruitful sharing and development of ideas. In the depot of the spaceship, in the Multi-Purpose Logistic Module (MPLM) fifty-plus artworks - object, painting, moving image, print, and installation – products of the „shape of time” by artists hailing from cities around Eastern Europe, notably Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, and Bratislava will be stored.
The spacecraft’s interior will also be used for conversations with participating artists, other curators, and critics—these discussions will be open to the public.

Participants and participating projects

Anna Artaker, Babi Badalov, Zbyněk Baladrán, László Beke, Walter Benjamin, Vladimír Boudník, Ondřej Buddeus, Erick Beltrán, Derya Bengi, Igor and Ivan Buharov, Luis Camnitzer, Josef Dabernig, Curatorial Dictionary, Orshi Drozdik, Miklós Erdély, Stano Filko, Zsuzsi Flohr, János Fodor, Andreas Fogarasi, Heinz Frank, Paweł Freisler, Tomislav Gotovac, Reesa Greenberg, Ion Grigorescu, Lukáš Jasanský - Martin Polák, Mihuț Boșcu Kafchin, David Karas, Sung Hwan Kim, Tamás Király, Barbora Kleinhamplová, Július Koller, Igor Korpaczewski, Eva Koťátková, Jiří Kovanda, KWIEKULIK (Zofia Kulik/Przemysław Kwiek), Denisa Lehocká, Václav Magid, Elin Magnusson, János Major, Ján Mančuška, Piet Mondrian, Paul Neagu, Ioana Nemes, Boris Ondreička, Parallel Chronologies (An Archive of East European Exhibitions), Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Walter Pichler, François Piron, Łukasz Ronduda, Gábor Roskó, Hedwig Saxenhuber, Ernst Schmidt Jr., Ruti Sela, Catarina Simão, Société Réaliste, Tereza Stejskalová, Sweet Sixties: Local Modernities and Musical Turkey in the 1960s, Goran Trbuljak, Tamás St. Turba, Zsuzsi Ujj, Mona Vătămanu -Florin Tudor, Avdey Ter-Oganyan, Eszter Szakács, Katarina Sević, János Sugár, Jan Verwoert, Krzysztof Zarebski.

The exhibition is curated by tranzit.org, Vít Havránek (Prague), Dóra Hegyi (Budapest) and Georg Schöllhammer (Vienna) and organized by Lauren Cornell, Curator, 2015 Triennial, Museum as Hub, and Digital Projects.