An exhibition on the occasion of the 26th Planetary Congress in Cologne 2013

Gazing at the starry sky has always awakened longings. It took nearly 100 years for the vision of Jules Verne's Journey to the Moon (De la Terre à la Lune, Paris 1865) at the height of the Cold War to finally be realized.

The 26th Planetary Congress of the Association of Space Explorers [ASE] will take place in Cologne during the first week of July. At this gathering of living astronauts (and veterans), who called themselves “Citizens of Space – Guardians of the Earth” when their club was founded in 1983, ideas about the future use of space will be exchanged and propagated. Pragmatic commercial models of thought that have nothing in common with Verne's visions.

The discussion about future uses of the cosmos will be artistically accentuated by Markus Döhne and Res Ingold in the tower of the Luther Church from June 28 to July 14 under the title return to forever. Specifically, we encounter portraits of rockets and astronauts, a monkey and a mole, and a journey to the moon that ends in the Earth’s interior.

It is an exhibition about travel and discovery, and the tower itself–as the vehicle of this journey–resembles a rocket, its floors can be read as stages in which this journey is told.

One of Jules Verne’s dreams seems to have been realized, while the other, a journey into the Earth's interior (Voyage au centre de la terre, Paris 1864), still awaits its realization. Initial projects, as we learn in the exhibition, are already underway. While engineers at the beginning of manned space travel used rats and mice, later dogs and monkeys, now, for a change and to explore the Earth's interior, a mole is digging in the church tower.

MD & RI, June 2013