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"Moon geese are migration birds that annually travel between the Earth and the Moon," begins German artist Agnes Meyer-Brandis' enigmatic video and heartwarming video.
Over the next ten minutes, we see the hatching, imprinting, and training of a small flock of goslings -- in one scene, Meyer-Brandis cycles down a track yelling and shouting, with her geese flapping their wings and chasing behind her.
These geese, affectionately named after the heroes -- real and fictional -- of the space age, are no ordinary birds: Meyer-Brandis has chosen them for a special mission. These birds are to be "moon geese", these birds are going to fly to the Moon.
The Man on the Moone
Francis Godwin was a English bishop, who lived from 1562-1633 and wrote a remarkable tale of one man's journey to the Moon, now considered by some to be the world's first work of science fiction. "The Man on the Moone", published posthumously in 1638, tells the story of Domingo Gonzales, who flies to the Moon on a chariot pulled by moon geese.
As well as being a terrifically far out story -- he encounters a race of Christian people called "Lunars" living on the Moon and lands in China on his way home -- The Man on the Moone contains a tantalising and impressive description of weightlessness:
"The Lines slacked; neither I, nor the Engine moved at all, but abode still as having no manner of weight," he writes, before adding what sounds like a description of gravity*: "those things which wee call heavie, do not sinke toward the Center of the Earth, as their naturall place, but as drawen by a secret property of the Globe of the Earth, or rather some thing within the same."*
Remember, Newton would not present his work on gravitation until 1686, almost 50 years later.
Meyer-Brandis first discovered this story in 2007, while working on a different project that involved investigating cloud formation and trips in zero-gravity on the "vomit comet". "Since then I had moon geese in my head," she laughs during a Skype call with Wired.co.uk.
Her first investigations into moon geese led her to Novosibirsk in Siberia in 2008. On 1 August of that year there was to be a total solar eclipse and Siberia was the place to be for the full effect. "I was wondering if these cosmic phenomena would somehow influence the behaviour of moon geese," she says, with a barely concealed smile that momentarily breaks her deadpan delivery. "Maybe they [would] take off and fly to the Moon with such a phenomena."
The experiment was simple: she gathered together 13 "moon" geese on a sand island in the river Ob and hooked them up a chariot with a pilot, a Russian parachutist "in case they took off so that she could come down again," says Meyer-Brandis.
As you might expect, the results of this initial experiment were... inconclusive. "The total eclipse caused total darkness. At the final moment of course the geese vanished from the naked eye," she says teasing.
A poetic approach to the unknown
Such is the playful and tongue-in-cheek style of Meyer-Brandis.
Throughout our interview she varies between a set-in-stone straight face and bursts of laughter. It saddens me that this sentence might be necessary, but readers, she is well aware that moon geese do not actually exist.
"The work I do is a poetic approach to the unknown. [...] I explore the constructions of reality," she says. "I am very much interested in the role of imagination."
She began her academic life as a mineralogist, before quitting after a year of her undergraduate degree to study sculpture. In 2003 she founded her own arts institute, now called "Research Raft for Art and Subjective Science".
The inclusion of "science" in the name is thoroughly deserved: her projects are "investigations" in the most extreme sense of the word. "[With every project] I jump into another world, where I guess you are confronted with a lot of new systems and elements but that's very interesting," she says. "Each project is for me a whole Universe."
Thus in 2011, three years after the solar eclipse in Siberia, Meyer-Brandis moved to a farm in Italy where she lived for a year, often by herself, paintstakingly raising geese by hand. If she was to understand moon geese, she would have to experience every moment of their lives and even become mother moon goose.
The Moon Goose Analogue
Pollinaria is a farm in Abruzzo, central Italy. It mainly produces olive oil, but also opens its doors to artistic projects. "I told the farmer [Gaetano Carboni], I have a project I would like to realise, but you have to think very well if you want it," says Meyer-Brandis, noting that geese can live for decades.
He accepted the near-life long commitment to having the geese and beginning in March 2011, Pollinaria became a partner in the project and a training facility for a flock of eleven moon geese.
From the moment she received the eggs, Meyer-Brandis began imprinting herself on them, speaking to them even before they were hatched. This way, they would always look to her as their leader and mother.
She gave them the names of astronauts, and other space-related characters. One goose is named after Neil Armstrong, another Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to fly in space. There is also Gonzales, named after the character in The Man on the Moone and Kaguya, in honour of the Japanese moon goddess of the same name.
In order to successfully raise the geese, she consulted with geese breeders in Germany and Italy -- "we got into the geese breeder network" -- and to successful train them as astronauts, she drew on conversations with Nasa scientists during her visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2010.
Being mother to a newly hatched group of goslings was no easy task. "For the first five or six weeks I was continuously with them, I just sneaked away in the night for some hours to sleep," she remembers. "I couldn't escape, when I had to visit a restroom [for example] it was quite dramatic, they would start screaming."
But within a few days of birth, she began astronaut training, including space walks, flight training (she would wear a large V
[to imitate the V-shaped flying formation geese use] while the geese walked or ran behind her) and "mobile moon training", where Meyer-Brandis would walk with a large globe so that the geese would know what to aim for on their way to the moon.
She didn't neglect the academic side of things, teaching the geese about the Earth's space debris problem: "[the geese] need to know what kind of danger [they face], what stuff may lie between the Earth and Moon."
Finally, the culmination of their training, after nine months, was the Moon Goose Analogue -- a replica of the Moon's surface, inspired by the Mars 500 mission, where the geese could live and adapt to some of the conditions on the Moon (weightlessness and a lack of air being notable exceptions).
A control room was built at an exhibition in Liverpool and then Newcastle, where visitors could observe the geese, Skype with them and see for themselves a replica of the geese's moon-like home in Italy. For the first time since 2021, the full exhibition is due to be re-opened to the public again by The Arts Catalyst and Fact, who commissioned the work in coproduction with Z33, this time in London on 9 January.
One small waddle for geese, one giant flap for geesekind
Agnes Meyer-Brandis is currently living in a forest in Finland, where she is "working on a forest research station" that she is unable to discuss in detail at the moment. She visits the geese from time to time, but they're not always so receptive when she returns. "[They are sometimes] a little bit pissed off that I went away.
It takes like two days until they are nice again," she says.
Their group has grown, with four goslings now hatched or "born on the Moon" as Meyer-Brandis describes it.
"They grew up and they don't need me anymore. They need each other but it's not necessary that I'm there."
The first unmanned, but not ungeesed, mission to the Moon is planned for 2027, with a manned mission following in 2032, obvious difficulties in flying geese to the Moon notwithstanding.
For all we know, the geese might have flown there already. "[When we return to the Moon] maybe [...] they will find a feather, it would be interesting. Or some goose shit," she says laughing. "There must be for sure some geese footprints."
*The full film "Moon Goose Colony", which is not available online, will be on show at the following exhibitions:
The End of the 20th Century. The Best Is Yet to Come -- Berlin, 14 September to 30 March*
*VIDEONALE.14 on Tour -- Moscow, 18 to 24 September
Hongkong Microwave Festival -- Hong Kong, 8 to 17 November*
<span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1663045292"><span class="aQJ">The full exhibition comes to London on 9 January.
<span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1663045292"><span class="aQJ">Updated 16/09/2013: Specific date for London exhibition added
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
