Summary

Inspired by the overwhelming force of 2G and the ensuing befuddlement, the work might be read as a tongue-in-cheek homage to Yuri Gagarin, the people of Star City and the pioneering artists who attempted to create work on a plunging aircraft. Kötting provides an insight into the madness of experimentation in the extreme environment of a zero gravity flight on a Russian military base, where Gagarin’s face smiles down at you from almost every building. A wobbly B-film rocket follows a similar trajectory to the parabolic flight path, reaching for the stars before plummeting nose cone first back into the hard Earth, echoing the Russian’s more brutal approach to re-entry landings than the NASA ocean splashdowns. The rocket’s flight links a kaleidoscope of grainy archive images from Moscow, Star City and the parabolic flight on which Kotting participated. The film was also commissioned by The Cornerhouse for projection on a large outdoor screen in Manchester in 2005.