FUNDAMENTAL CATALOGUE

Fundamental Catalogue (2015–2021) researches the little known history of the Leningrad Pulkovo Observatory scientific mission to Chile. Between 1962 and 1973 Soviet and Chilean astronomers were carrying out joint observations of the southern sky. The mission required three purposely built telescopes, two of which remain in Chile. Various sources agree that the study of the coordinates of the southern stars was vital for navigation in space, and thus the Soviet space programme. In September 1973 the scientific work was abruptly interrupted by the right-wing military coup led by general Augusto Pinochet, and the Soviet astronomers had to leave the country almost immediately. The Fundamental Stars Catalogue SPF1, a result of the eleven years of joint work by the Pulkovo Observatory and the University of Chile was published in Santiago in 1975, two years after the unexpected departure of the Soviet astronomers.

Bringing together contemporary and archive photographs, scientific imagery, found objects, and video the project looks for possible relations between science, politics, and technology. The election of a Marxist president in Chile results in the hurried evacuation of the Soviet scientists three years later, the largest Soviet telescope in Chile ceases operations as a consequence of the world-wide decline in the sales of photographic film, while establishing correct star coordinates in the Southern Hemisphere turns out essential for the spacecraft navigation.

Chapters from this research have been presented at 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in Ekaterinburg (2019), the Princeton University School of Architecture Gallery (2016), as well in the Space Race Archaeologies Book published by Dom Publishers, Berlin (2016).