Another Space Agency is Possible

Echo Correspondence presents Another Space Agency is Possible (ASAP), a project by British designer Sophie Dyer. From 14 April – 10 May, the Press-Haus at Brunnstube, Schafberg will be transformed into a community ground station, which will receive transmissions from polar orbiting weather satellites and serve as a forum for discussion about weather, space and collective practice.

For five years, Dyer co-led the feminist art, tech and pedagogy collective, open-weather. Co-founded with geographer Sasha Engelmann, open-weather became a planetary network of 100+ DIY Satellite Ground Stations. From Vienna to Valparaíso, Phnom Penh and Svalbard, this volunteer-operated network recorded storms, political climates and the slow death of the last publicly accessible, analogue weather satellites. 

In imagining open-weather as a feminist space agency, ASAP asks what other space agencies exist? How might they alter our perception of the planet and so how we relate to it? These questions are probed through a new soundwork, material experiments and the staging of the ground station itself.