Zero Genie
On the surface, a playful attempt to perform feats ascribed to the genies and flying carpets of ancient myth, Zero Genie was conceived as a response to the structure and history of the space program over the last 50 years. Despite the vast expense of space exploration and its first world bias, for millennia people have been traveling to the outermost regions of the cosmos through shamanistic practices. Can we deride their experiences as being any less valid, any less real than those of astronauts and cosmonauts ? In the context of the persistent conspiracy theories questioning whether the Americans actually ever did land on the moon, which propose that the whole mission was a charade acted out in a film studio, the question as to what is real and what is not becomes ever more pertinent. The artists, Ansuman Biswas and Jem Finer, dressed themselves in genie costumes: turbans, be jeweled waistcoats, baggy satin trousers and gold curly toed shoes. In the belly of the Soviet troop carrier, they attempted to fly carpets, smoke a hookah, play shawms, to evoke the mythical magic of the genie, to travel the spaceways on a shoestring. http;//www.zerogenie.org
