Joan Fontcuberta and the Sputnik
by Jorge Luis Marzo

For this Project (1997), Fontcuberta fabricated a story about an evidence for a “Soyuz 2” mission involving cosmonaut Ivan Istochnikov. Soyuz 1, an actual Soviet space mission in 1967, had ended with the death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov when the spacecraft crashed on landing. In 1968, according to the fabricated story, “Istochnikov and his canine companion Kloka mysteriously vanished after leaving the [Soyuz 2] capsule for a routine space walk. When the Soyuz 3 arrived for a docking maneuver, it found only a vodka bottle containing a note, floating in orbit outside the empty, meteorite damaged ship.” To avoid embarrassment, Soviet officials deleted Istochnikov from official Soviet history; however, the “Sputnik Foundation” discovered Istochnikov’s “voice transcriptions, videos, original annotations, some of his personal effects, and photographs taken throughout his lifetime.” The exhibition of artifacts (e.g., photographs) related to “Soyuz 2” was shown in many countries, including Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Japan, and the United States. Among other reactions to the exhibition, a Russian ambassador “got extremely angry because [Fontcuberta] was insulting the glorious Russian past and threatened to present a diplomatic complaint.”

Several lines of evidence available since the first exhibition of “Sputnik” in 1997 in Madrid suggest that the story and artifacts form an elaborate hoax. Read more at Wikipedia.

Espaà±ol
Cuando algo parece natural, como el suelo, se tiende a no interpretarlo, a no prestarle atencià³n. Pero, un detalle extraà±o, una mirada mà¡s atenta de lo normal, una leve dislocacià³n pueden hacer que el suelo devenga una realidad central, no una simple sombra por debajo de las cosas. (more…)