(Love you) To the Moon and Back, Is an odyssey that started in the summer of 2021 during the Greek wildfires and while Timothy was on a nightlong trip back to Athens from the island of Ikaria. (The island got its name from Icarus’s splashdown)
Entering a post-COVID era and in the metaphorical position of a shipwrecked, Timothy starts writing a letter addressed to astronaut Buzz Aldrin, tackling topics of mental health and vanity. Topics that Aldrin himself faced in his thirties on his return back to Earth from the Moon. The letter becomes a score that Timothy performs for a period of 10 months in Antwerp, his own Moon.
From September 2022 till June 2023, Timothy used his dog’s walks as his studio space in Antwerp. Starting out by walking 10km per day and ending at 15 km per day, they walked 4,000km. During these walks Timothy would send text messages to himself, collecting notes on vanity, grief, hunger and love. By adding up all the text messages, he composed a script of 8 chapters, creating a composite biography using biographical details of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, artist Paul Van Hoeydonck and artist Issabele Cordemans.
(love you) To the Moon and Back is a site-specific, 40’ binaural audio walk, going under and over the Scheldt River, starting and ending at the Sint-Annatunnel. It’s a loop on the map, where the listener walks around the water of a river that never passes twice. It’s a trip to the moon and back. The audio walk is divided into seven site-specific chapters and can be performed by following the instructions and scanning the QR codes on the given map.
The eighth chapter is a performative reading titled The Moon Ladies. A narration based on the site specificity of the red-light district of Antwerp and two personae: the American astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, who was the second man to walk on the moon and the Belgian multimedia artist, Isabelle Cordemans. Aldrin’s alcohol addiction and depression, are translated through the artistic practice of Cordemans, which attempts to reproduce images, translating a condition called functional, visual-spatial loss.
On view at KuNST+ vzw.
