Klendathu Survey
Video, Prints
Sculptures are vessels for narratives and sometimes even for silence. This project explores speculative narratives and documentation related to the very first Official Klendathu Expedition to the Sol System.
Klendathu is the fictional homeworld of the Arachnids, the insectoid alien species from the1959 novel Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. Introduced as a hostile enemy planet, it becomes a symbol of fear, propaganda, and the unknowable "other" in a satirical sci-fi universe that critiques militarism and media manipulation.
This body of work centers on the documentation of various vessel variants called ‘Saetas’, imagined as developed on Klendathu for reconnaissance around planet Earth.
By borrowing from pop science fiction, it plays with the aesthetics of worldbuilding to reflect on broader themes such as colonial anxiety, surveillance, and the politics of inventing enemies.
These sculptural forms become a symbol of exploration that becomes war, using a shape and a name that evokes with irony one of the first type of weaponry manufactured by humans.
