About
About
Named after extraterrestrial stones that crashed into the earth’s crust and ocean floors, Tektite linked outer space to oceanic depths: a man-in-sea program that mirrored the nation’s spaceflight program. Jointly supported by NASA and the U.S. Navy, America’s aquanauts lived and worked in a novel underwater research station built by the General Electric Corporation, conducting historic dives and oceanographic research during the height of the Space Race.
Tektite Revisited takes as its starting point—but by no means its conclusion—the agency’s Apollo-era foray into space station design and underwater architecture. At the conceptual core of the current project is a story about a futuristic aquatic habitat: its genesis in the late 1960s at the height of the Apollo era; its deployment atop the ruins of a former sugar plantation in the remote Caribbean at the dawn of the 1970s; and its eventual demise in California during the 1980s—a period of financial austerity and increasing homelessness.
Tektite Revisited takes as its starting point—but by no means its conclusion—the agency’s Apollo-era foray into space station design and underwater architecture. At the conceptual core of the current project is a story about a futuristic aquatic habitat: its genesis in the late 1960s at the height of the Apollo era; its deployment atop the ruins of a former sugar plantation in the remote Caribbean at the dawn of the 1970s; and its eventual demise in California during the 1980s—a period of financial austerity and increasing homelessness.
Beyond occasioning the first critical re-examination of NASA’s forgotten underwater research program, Tektite Revisited functions as an extended meditation on what it means to inhabit a given space. The project regards the promise (and limits) of utopian architecture in order to examine a broader debate about data, surveillance, and qualitative approaches to understanding human experience— and considers how Cold War-era paradigms of knowledge production continue to attenuate our relationships to information and environment.
Conceived in 2010 as an interdisciplinary platform for studying the aesthetics and media ecologies of the Cold War, Tektite Revisited encompasses creative writing, exhibition making, symposia, and participation in public education initiatives.
A forthcoming feature-length documentary film and accompanying anthology are currently supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Conceived in 2010 as an interdisciplinary platform for studying the aesthetics and media ecologies of the Cold War, Tektite Revisited encompasses creative writing, exhibition making, symposia, and participation in public education initiatives.
A forthcoming feature-length documentary film and accompanying anthology are currently supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.