SANTIAGO REYES VILLAVECES

Planetario de Bogotá
June—Oct 2019

In 1973, Richard Nixon distributed moon rocks brought to earth by the Apollo 11 and 17 missions between the 50 US states and 135 countries, including Denmark. Nixon framed these gifts as a symbol of ‘goodwill.’ The dispersion generated multiple narratives about imperial expansion and the conquest of space, the consolidation of power through diplomatic seduction, and the unification of mankind under the conditions of globalization.

The Moon Rock Project (MRP), by the Colombian artist Santiago Reyes Villaveces, outlines a topography of the moon rocks that interprets the overdetermined meanings accumulated around Nixon’s gesture. MRP is anchored in the presumption that this collection of the rocks can subvert power concentrations and oppose the colonial process undertaken by the Nixon administration. The point of departure for the project is a journey around the contour of the dispersion of the Moon fragments. This journey is inversely equivalent to Nixon’s colonial ambition; I traverse the surface of the moon rocks to construct a speculative fiction that subverts the US Government’s show of power. This counter-cartographic project maps the dispersion of the Moon on the Earth using a research-creation process that collects, examines and redeploys images, videos, text, interviews, and archival material relevant to the rocks and Nixon gesture to imagine alternate histories and futures.

The project presented by Reyes Villaveces in Bogota Planetarium is composed by four interventions: Libra, I see Earth, Moon Rock Project—Mnemosyne (With the collaboration of Nicolás Bonilla, Juan Covelli and Nicolás Bonilla) and the show First in the Moon.