Urgent Conversations: Athens – Antwerp

    ENELNL

    The exhibitions Urgent Conversations: Athens–Antwerp and Urgent Conversations: Antwerp – Athens are a collaboration between EMST and M HKA, a theoretical and visual dialogue, based on works from the collections of both museums, which includes more than 70 works structured in 22 topics.   

    28.04.2017 - 07.01.2018        

    M HKA, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen - Leuvenstraat 32, 2000 Antwerpen

    EMST, National Museum of Contemporary Art - Kallirrois Avenue & Amvr. Frantzi Str., Athens 11743

    Panamarenko

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    (c)image: Wim Van Eesbeek
    Vliegeniersuniform [Spacesuit]
    Panamarenko
    Object

    This aviator’s suit dates from the mid-1950s and is of American manufacture. The idea was to inflate the suit, to counteract the effect of low air pressure at high altitude. Panamarenko probably bought it at an American army surplus
    store, and appeared with it for the first time at the “KYRPWWAWAX” happening in Ostend on 6 August 1965. Already presenting himself at this point as a ‘multimillionaire’, he then lent the suit to Hugo Heyrman for later happenings, as it fitted better with Heyrman’s utopian ‘happy space maker’ image. This is why the aviator’s suit became inextricably linked in the happening context with space flight, and would go down in history as the ‘spacesuit’.

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