César Saëz
"César Saëz" by Christine Redfern, Winter 2006, pp. 85-86
I have to admit that when I first encountered César Saëz’s project it crossed my mind that maybe the Geostationary Banana Over Texas was a media prank, just one big joke. That was in November, 2005, when Saëz opened his studio doors in Montreal and launched the idea to the public as a special project of the artist-run centre Articule. My disbelief was perhaps not too surprising as I listened to Saëz outline his plan to build a 300-metre-long helium-filled banana and float it between the earth’s high atmosphere and low orbit. He was looking for funding and collaborators to create this $1,000,000 inflatable, which would be visible in the Texan sky for approximately one month and be the world’s “first visual-art project in outer space.”
The fantastical project turned out to be no spoof. Since its genesis, it has already gone through three phases of development. Phase I took place in Argentina in January, 2006; Phase II was part of the Havana Biennial in February. Phase III happened late last summer in Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec, where I was able to catch up with Saëz and discuss his unfolding behemoth. His team, which was at work in the local hockey arena, had grown to include the computer- savvy Ontarian Hugues Coupal, who works on 3-D simulation, as well as the visual artists Antoon Versteegde and Sylvia Dekker from the Netherlands, who develop the bamboo armature around which the nylon shell of the banana skin will rest.
Until now, the project has consisted of maquettes and prototypes to test the proposed technology. The undertaking no longer seems so far-fetched when you look past bananas and consider the bamboo structure built at Baie-Saint-Paul and previous large-scale, lightweight constructions by Versteegde (www.versteegde.nl). Saëz plans to launch the completed full-scale banana from Mexico in the spring of 2008 with help from a group of artists and volunteers. The scope of the endeavour brings to mind Christo and Jeanne-Claude, but with a dose of humour and irony missing from their productions. Imagine Texans looking at the sky, scratching their heads, wondering what it all means.
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