19 June | Book Launch: Made Ground – Shona Kitchen and Aly Ogasian
Book Launch (EN): Made Ground
19.06. 2026, 18:00
With Shona Kitchen and Aly Ogasian
Moderated by Elisabeth Tauber
In collaboration with unibz, Scripps College
Book Launch: Made Ground by Shona Kitchen and Aly Ogasian. Photo: Imagery Data 2/3/20 Google, TerraMetrics 28°45″ 22.0″N 80°45’47.0“W, Foto Forum Festival Bolzano/Bozen, 2026
Made ground is a compendium of artist Shona Kitchen and Aly Ogasian’s site-specific work on “Grey Island” an artificial island shared by NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Framed by the waning optimism of the space race and today’s climate and political uncertainties, the project reflects on human-made landscapes shaped by layered, often contradictory histories. Blending moments of absurdity with a quiet sense of hope, Made Ground considers the persistence of life within an increasingly fragile world.
Shona Kitchen and Aly Ogasian in the Field, Grey Island, Mosquito Lagoon, Merritt Island, Florida, USA. Image Courtesy of artists, photo by Jessina Leonard, Foto Forum Festival Bolzano/Bozen, 2026
NO WAY BACK Prelude by Damian White
Climate change seems to require that we adjust to the prospects of socioecological worlds marked by near permanent unsettlement.
Strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation, as Cameron Tonkinwise observes, will have to be iterative and ongoing, made again and again and again. With each steady increase in global temperature, we find ourselves thrown into uncanny hybrid worlds and unsettling shifting dynamics for which we have few route maps.
One response to this state of affairs from the global billionaire class is to follow Elon Musk and prepare for building Elysium on Mars. The artists and sci-art-cosmonauts Ogasian and Kitchen suggest a different path. Rather than making plans to jump ship, they suggest we remain in place; we should focus our science-art energies on mapping and archiving the new uncanny spaces and alien landscapes that are erupting around the edges of the Anthropocene.
Shona Kitchen & Aly Ogasian
As collaborators, their practice is research-based and often site-specific. Recent projects offer a fresh perspective on notions of exploration and expedition in the twenty-first century. Their methods of investigation reveal a latent irony: they observe the world with curiosity, employing processes of discovery that can appear both absurd and humorous. Their aim is to uncover new micro- and macroscopic territories, reveal hidden histories, and bring forgotten knowledge to light.
Book: Shona Kitchen and Aly Ogasian
Writing: Charlie Hailey, Damian White, and the artists
Design: Ji Kim
Published by Krisis Publishing
Location (Book Launch): Foto Forum
Language: English