Cnes: call for projects

Since 2000, the Observatoire de l'Espace, the cultural laboratory of the Cnes (Centre national d'études spatiales), has been developing an original approach to bring out knowledge and contemporary creations around the space universe. As part of its policy of supporting contemporary art, the Cnes invites artists, authors and researchers to explore this field and highlight the issues surrounding the imaginary world of space, through research programmes, publications, residencies and calls for projects.

In 2023, CNES's Observatoire de l'Espace is offering artists the chance to experience weightlessness as a way of confronting the notion of ecstasy and renewing traditional representations of it. The aim is to understand what can happen in a micro-gravity environment and to take a unique look at the notion of ecstasy.

The artist is invited to propose a work to be created during a parabolic flight in an Airbus zero-g. The work will then be presented in an exhibition on Earth and will become part of the Observatoire de l'Espace's contemporary art collection at Les Abattoirs.

This call is open to professional artists to produce a work in the visual and plastic arts. The main criteria considered by the artistic committee will be the extent to which the work takes into account the weight component, its feasibility in terms of the technical constraints of the flight, the attention paid to the notion of ecstasy, and the aesthetic approach adopted by the artist.

The winning project will be announced in December 2023 and scheduled for one of the next flight campaigns, in April 2024.

Deadline for applications: 4pm on 6 November 2022.

The application form is available here : L'Extase, call for zero-G creations

Since 2014, the CNES Space Observatory's contemporary art collection has brought together works from these programmes. Created by artists from all disciplines, these works are produced using materials, both past and present, from space activities. Since 2017, each work has been on deposit at the Abattoirs, Musée - Frac Occitanie Toulouse, reinforcing the fertile dialogue between the arts and sciences developed in the collections. This has given rise to a number of exhibitions on the Toulouse site and in the Occitanie region (Zero Gravity, 2018; Uncertainties of Space, 2022; And now the space!, 2022).