Zero Gravity, Anti-Mimesis and the Abolition of the Horizon: On Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noordung’s “Postgravity Art”

This article presents the work of the retro-utopian Slovenian performance and theater collective Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noordung and its effort to abolish mimetic art in zero gravity (“postgravity art”). It describes the origin of a space station rotating around its own axis (designed in 1928 by Hermann Potočnik Noordung in The Problem of Space Travel); questions the relationship between zero gravity and the historical avant-garde (especially Suprematism) as postulated by theater director Dragan Živadinov; and sketches the past, present and future of the collective’s 50-year project Noordung 1995–2045.