“orbital debris_2020” shows a full scale mock-up of the Russian module of the International Space Station (ISS), humankind’s most distant orbital outpost. The mock-up is housed 12m below the surface in a gigantic hydrolab of five million liters of water in Star City, the Russian space training center near Moscow. The hydrolab is used by Russian cosmonauts for extravehicular activity training (EVA). The space station was originally scheduled to be decommissioned in 2020 and is now set to be shut down in 2028. After that, it will become yet another piece of orbital debris. However, it will likely not remain in space forever, but it will eventually plunge into the ocean.

The artwork shows a vertical view of the Russian ISS module from 10m above the surface. Visually linked to “space debris I,” the work is a digital recomposition of various perspectives of the module merged into each other. It refers to the extremely cramped living space on board the station as well as to the dual relationship of reality and simulation that is a fundamental principle in space travel. The artist himself constructed an EVA training module outside and inside the mock-up.