Where Does the ...

2010, installation

The installation consists of a TV screen, two media players, a customized digital projector on tripod, and a video camera on tripod.

“We’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s,

I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth, and a landing on Mars will follow, and I expect to be around to see it.”

Barack Obama’s space policy speech at the Kennedy Space Center, April 15, 2010

Everyone interested why Obama canceled the billions worth program for landing on the Moon of his predecessor and replaced it with his own ambitious program for landing on Mars is invited to the installation Where does the Martian President live? where Obama’s speech from the Kennedy Space Center is visually transcoded for human perception.

After the cancellation of Space Shuttle and Constellation programs almost 10 000 rocket scientists and engineers are going to loose their jobs. This could destroy the know-how for building rockets of the US, which is the world leader in space research. With this decision Obama’s administration in fact hinders human landing on Mars.

As Robert Zubrin, President of The Mars Society, said for New York Daily News, “Obama called for sending a crew to a near Earth asteroid by 2025. … Had Obama not canceled the Ares 5, we could have used it to perform an asteroid mission by 2016. But the President, while calling for such a flight, actually is terminating the programs that would make it possible.”

What Obama did sounds illogical and obviously in contradiction with the Martian program he promoted. But if we assume that besides his obvious position as the president of the United States, he is the leader of the Martians who live around us on the planet Earth disguised as human beings, it becomes logical that his real mission is to prevent humans from landing on Mars. And therefore he uses the TV broadcasts to send messages to his fellow Martians by using frequencies that are beyond human perceptions.

Through the the technology used in this work the real speech of Obama at Kennedy Space Center is decoded for human perception as well. To receive information for future transcoded emissions from the Green House write to: petko at dourmana dot com.

Where Does the Martian President Live was first presented in the exhibition "partition_2.0 / fake" at MODEM Centre for Modern and Contemporary Arts in Debrecen, Hungary in 2010. Later presentations include the exhibitions "Martians", Videospace Gallery, Budapest (2010), "Frame Research", Maus Hábitos, Porto (2010), "Quadratic Equations", Kepes Institute, Eger, Hungary (2012) and "Where Does the Martian President Live", Graffit Gallery, Varna, Bulgaria (2012).