Acrylic on canvas, lithography, sound
IAB iron meteorite, 19 gr
NATURHISTORISCHES MUSEUM WIEN 2018-19
UNITED NATIONS OFFICE, VIENNA 2019-22
Mesón de Fierro is the first recorded meteorite of the Americas. A legendary landmark to the inhabitants who witnessed the fall, it was reported as early as 1576 by the Spanish Colony. A ritualized object, visited and documented for over two centuries, the 3-meter long mass mysteriously vanished in 1783 and, ever since, a vibrant cultural ecosystem flourished around this specimen.
Based on the idea that searching can be much more interesting than finding, the artist duo pursues the narratological and documentary traces that this mythical presence of cosmic origin has left on our planet, following its trail through institutions, archives and collections. In 2017, Faivovich & Goldberg managed to locate a 19-gram ferric fragment at Vienna’s Natural History Museum [NHM] meteorite collection. As the main enablers of a long transdisciplinary research process, they were able to establish a hypothetical relationship between the fragment and Mesón de Fierro. The tiny piece, classified since the beginning of the 19th century under the name A-18, was presented the following year in the exhibition Auf der Suche nach Mesón de Fierro within NHM’s historic mineral and meteorite exhibit halls, and was accompanied, among other components, by a 1:1 scale painting of the Mesón produced by the artists in 2011 which acted both as an invocation for the meteorite’s rediscovery and as image of the alchemic crossing from one form of intelligence to another.The forms of address embedded in this gesture suggest answers to ancient mysteries, entering the present to influence the futures dispersed within it. Faivovich & Goldberg provoke arguments and counterarguments, stories and polemics. Testing the validity of speculative thinking against the bureaucracies of space rationality, the painting of Mesón de Fierro subsequently migrated to the United Nation’s central rotunda in Vienna. On occasion of the paintings unveiling, Mesón de Fierro: Towards the XXII Century took place: a forum held by artists, curators, scientists and diplomats, which allowed to deepen the approach to ideas such as the advent of the Anthropocene, the communion with the non-human, the interactions between terrestrial ecosystems and Outer Space and the contrast between human and cosmic time, revealing the underlying connection between our earthly endeavors and the non-human distance of deep histories and futures.