An old circus cage dating from around 1890 was standing right in downtown Vienna amid the busy traffic on Karlsplatz. Inside, a sadly squalid setting presented itself: two astronauts were sitting and lying around, surrounded by ditched banal everyday objects like a broken washing machine, a tent, a couple of wilted potted plants, water, and some food. Next to them, a stuffed bird was sitting which could no longer sing, and a stepladder pointed upward, indicating the unconquerable way to the stars. The installation was entitled One Day We Will Shine Like the Stars; full of irony, anarchy, and humility, the work of Egyptian artist Basim Magdy was indeed multivocal and ambiguous. One Day We Will Shine Like the Stars sounds like hope, like the promise of another, better, bigger world and invokes the beautiful illusion that informed all human attempts to discover and explore outer space. But what met the eye here was an old discarded circus cage, behind whose bars two worn-out astronauts eked out their wretched existence as a funfair attraction.

The collective vision of outer space as a place of yearning, hope, and redemption, but also of threatening fear was cut down by Basim Magdy to a cheesy circus act. But even if it was not the usual shining heroes that were presented here, the exhausted figures in their sordid environment still conveyed a sense of the heroism of failure. Magdy’s installation presented itself as an unpretentious examination of the end of humanity’s great dream of lording over not only earth, but the stars of heaven. However, the dream of conquering and colonizing the moon remained an illusion. It turned out to be a barren planet, a celestial body of dust and stone, without water or vegetation, useless and inhospitable to humans. In 1973, the manned moon flight program was eventually canceled.

Text: Katarzyna Uszynska