The assignment was clear from the beginning. Rosa Martinez hired me to find and a place to make unassisted flight possible. I chose Los Alamos, which is situated in a beautiful location high on a mountain- a site almost reaching into heavens. It was the perfect location, secret peak inhibited by scientists. I wanted all the available brains there to work for me like they did for Oppenheimer when the ultimate cloud was created, as a side effect to the nuclear blast.

by Simone Aaberg Kærn, Los Alamos 1999

CAMPING IN THE CLOUDS

Simone Aaberg Kærn's work for the SITE Santa Fe 1999, The Third International Biennial.

While our mental ability to fly is almost unrestricted, actual physical flying requires technological support and includes the risk of confronting the unexpected. Simone Aaberg Kærn's artistic research, which involves intriguing mixtures of fantasy and reality, theory and practice, has driven her to become an aviatrix. In her video Royal Greenland, Kærn explores both the desire to fly and the physical requirements that make flight possible. Through a combination of technology and gymnastics, she simulates unassisted flying. On the monitor, images of her body appear as they traverse natural and urban landscapes in unexpected trajectories.

For her project at the Los Alamos Airport, Camping in the clouds, Kærn invited visitors on an actual flight in a Piper Cub aeroplane. She has also discovered the stories of many unrecognised World War II women pilots and has memorialised them in a compelling series of portraits. Kærn illustrates the quirky relationships between art and life, the mystical and the technological, as well as the irony of machinery that both allows for the viewing of outstanding natural beauty and suggests modern warfare. Most significantly, she has shown how trust and freedom acquired through these radical flying adventures can lead to new ways of experiencing pleasure that originate in the intensity and pulse of life.

Rosita Valiente (Text from the catalogue ISBN 0965058395)