Aspen Space Station artists continue their Earth-focused missions – Aspen Daily News

Aspen Space Station artist Chris Erickson stands beside his life-sized Fire Pod sculpture in which space station director Ajax Axe lounges leisurely. Ericksons installation, part of The Wild Future Outpost ongoing exhibition, is on view at the Red Brick Center for the Arts. He will be discussing his design and development process for the pod at tonights Choose Your Own Future interactive workshop at the Aspen Art Museum.

The summer 2022 Aspen Space Station artists are continuing their missions as part of the ongoing and experiential exhibition, The Wild Future Outpost.

The crew of local creatives has been busy this week, with back-to-back community events geared toward engaging people in futurist thinking.

Following Tuesdays Climate Collapse Happy Hour held at the Red Brick Center for the Arts, three space station artists will run an interactive workshop today at the Aspen Art Museum titled Choose Your Own Future.

The event from 5:30-7:30 p.m. is free and requires registration through the AAM website, with limited spots remaining as of Tuesday afternoon. Presented by artists Ajax Axe, Chris Erickson and Nori Pao, the three-part workshop is focused on visualizing and creating future artifacts and designs that may be necessary or beneficial for humans living in Aspens surrounding environment 200 years from now.

For Pao, getting people to think about the future means they first must pause in the present moment. During tonights event, Pao will be enacting her third and final Future Prophecy clay tablet project of the summer.

This project specifically is about giving people a chance to pause and really think about whats important to you right now that youd want to convey to your future selves, Pao said. And then by putting that into an archival material, theyre making it real.

To set up the immersive art activity, Pao starts by guiding people through a meditative storytelling experience. She then provides each participant with their own board, carving tool and a smooth piece of clay, on which they inscribe messages to their future selves whether it be words, drawings or a combination of both.

Clay is a magical recording device, it records any mark you make on it even the invisible marks, it records how you touch it, Pao said. And once its put through firing, its super archival.

Two clay tablets, one inscribed with the words Everything Works As One and the other with Never Give Up, are pictured prior to being fired. Community members inscribed these messages into the clay pieces as part of local artist Nori Paos Future Prophecy project. Pao will conduct her final iteration of the project at tonights workshop.

Following tonights final iteration of the project the first iteration was held in a tent on the back of Aspen Mountain, and the second was in conjunction with space station artist Clarity Fornells Future Ritual installation Pao will fire all of the clay pieces created by community members this summer. She said there will be a total of around 35 to 40 inscribed tablets all of which will be buried at a location on Aspen Mountain on Oct. 9.

The select location will be registered under the Aspen Historical Society with instructions to dig up the tablets in 200 years, Pao said.

Its like a time capsule, and in a way, its a very solid form of intention setting that I think ties into the Aspen Space Station project as a whole, Pao said. Were trying to call attention to really critical things that we need to be thinking about right now, and were doing so in an accessible way.

Axe who spearheads the space station projects through her organization called Earth Force Climate Command will kick off the workshop this evening by walking people through a visualization exercise to imagine Aspen and its environmental conditions 200 years in the past, then 200 years in the future.

Next, Erickson will share with the group his design ideas and development process behind the making of his Fire Pod sculpture, which has been on display at the Red Brick Center.

Erickson created the life-size, interactive structure for a narrative set in the year 2122, where with the influx of forest fires, chemical pollution and atmospheric radiation the air quality on Earth has become toxic and the effects of climate change have reached unlivable conditions. Ericksons isolation Fire Pod, a model for his larger American Safety Armor Pods initiative, provides filtered air and shelter for earthlings to survive.

Paos Future Prophecy project closes out the workshop. Pao explained how this type of innovative and futuristic Earth-focused thinking, made tangible through art projects and immersive experiences, pushes the participants as well as the artists leading these projects into a performative and collaborative space.

Ajax is giving us a place to expand and experiment as artists and to push our own boundaries while pushing our participants boundaries, Pao said.

The thought-provoking experience is a continuation of what Axe and her team have been cultivating through The Wild Future Outpost since launching the project in late July. The local environmental activists will continue their Aspen missions through October.

The Choose Your Own Future experiential workshop will take place tonight from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the museum. The free event requires registration; details are available on the AAM website, aspenartmuseum.org. To register, email Teresa Booth Brown, AAM acting director of education and community programs, at tboothbrown@aspenartmuseum.org.

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Aspen Space Station artists continue their Earth-focused missions - Aspen Daily News