Paul Ramirez Jonas - Tranquility (from Men on the Moon)

Paul Ramirez Jonas
Tranquility (from Men on the Moon)

July 21 to August 10, 2019
50 years ago Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent 21 hours 31 minutes on the lunar surface at a site they named Tranquility Base. Track 16 is currently presenting Tranquility, the first in a series of Apollo 11 recordings that Paul Ramirez Jonas transferred onto wax cylinders. To accomplish this, he rebuilt Thomas Edison’s first phonograph machine then used it to record the first six and a half hours of audio from the Apollo 11 mission on the moon. Each of the green wax cylinders contain about a minute of sound. The artist transcribed this historic technological leap into an analog medium of the past, the phonograph. One of the major inventions of the 19th century, is combined with one of the greatest feats of the 20th century.

From the artist's Guggenheim library:
"His practice is characterized by a bracing, albeit nostalgic, idealism rooted in a faith in human resilience. Sensitive to the processes of globalization, he reveals its simultaneous tendencies towards interdependence and exclusion."
Paul Ramirez Jonas . Tranquility (from Men on the Moon), 1992. 398 wax cylinders, recording machine, book of transcript.
Statement by the artist:

Since 1990, I have been casting wax cylinders that I record onto with my home made replica of Edison’s first sound recording machine. I am re-recording the audio communication of the 23 hours men spent on the Moon during their first mission on July 20 and 21, 1969. Each wax record can hold on average 60 seconds of sound. Each cylinder is indexed to the second; and its contents are transcribed onto a ‘lyrics’ book. Many of the recordings contain static and silence. The project is broken into 4 sections Tranquility finished in 1992, EVA finished in 1996, Rest Period finished in 1998. The last segment is yet to be made.
Paul Ramírez Jonas selected solo exhibitions include Pinacoteca do Estado, Sao Paulo, Brazil; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; a survey at Ikon Gallery (UK) and Cornerhouse (UK). He has been included in group exhibitions at P.S.1 (NYC); the Brooklyn Museum; The Whitechapel (UK); Irish Museum of Modern Art (Ireland); The New Museum (NYC); and Kunsthaus Zurich (Switzerland). He participated in the 1st Johannesburg Biennale; the 1st Seoul Biennial; the 6th Shanghai Biennial; the 28th Sao Paulo Biennial; the 53rd Venice Biennial; and the 7th Bienal do Mercosul , Porto Alegre, Brazil. In 2010 his Key to the City project was presented by Creative Time in cooperation with the City of New York. In 2016 his Public Trust project was presented by Now & There in Boston. The Contemporary Art Museum Houston is organizing a 25 year survey of his work to be presented in 2017. He is currently an Associate Professor at Hunter College, City University of New York CUNY.

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