Helsinki-based Argentinian artist and filmmaker Axel Straschnoy probes scientific phenomena, astronautics, and the social and political facets of the human quest for knowledge. His conceptually inflected, research-driven projects can take many forms, yet they remain connected by a wide-angled, dynamic approach. For example, as part of “Float” (2019) at the Grenna Museum Polarcenter in Sweden, he launched a buoy in the Norwegian Sea that might make its way to the North Pole—a gesture aimed at counteracting the outcome of S.E. Andrée’s failed 1897 Arctic balloon expedition. Then, in “Brave the Heavenly Breezes” (2023), he presented the idea of an interstellar flanêur that, as he drifted through space, would decode our relationship to it.
“We believe and accept that these beings exist,” his current exhibition at Finland’s Espoo Museum of Modern Art (EMMA), draws on the ideas of J. Posadas, founder of a Trotskyist faction active in 1960s Argentina, who claimed that contact with the advanced communist civilizations inhabiting outer space would usher in a new era of peace and prosperity. Part of Straschnoy’s 2025 Fine Arts Academy of Finland Prize, “We believe” reflects on the limits, and agendas, of scientific and political utopianism, raising questions that remain relevant in today’s world of increasing polarization and environmental crisis.
John Gayer: After seeing “We believe and accept that these beings exist,” I thought Posadas’s premise was downright confusing. There’s the unimaginable, things that cannot be defined, and yet people keep trying to imagine it.
Axel Straschnoy: I think that’s the whole point of space. In Kant in the Land of Extraterrestrials, a book by the philosopher Peter Szendy, the idea of a being in space removes you from society. So, the initial creation of the extraterrestrial figure is that of the external viewpoint.
JG: Posadas, however, imagines extraterrestrial society as a better version of our society. There is no conflict, everyone is equal, and beings cooperate with each other. It’s a very tenuous idea.
AS: Research shows that such viewpoints embrace ideal qualities that normally serve the person who’s speaking. I have participated in some of the annual Congresses organized by the International Astronautical Federation and sit on their committee for space culture. My 2025 exhibition “Towards Space,” at Turku Art Museum, pertains to those experiences. At the Congress held in France four years ago, I spoke on the history of communists, which includes the Russian Cosmists, an unusual philosophical and cultural movement. The Cosmist Aleksandr Bogdanov, who was imprisoned for participating in the failed 1905 revolution, wrote the book Red Star while in jail. In this story, Martians introduce him to the highly advanced socialist society on their planet. So, the revolution that failed on earth, is part of Mars’s recent past.
There’s also Alita Queen of Mars, an early Soviet film, and 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The latter is analogous to the Cold War, with the body snatchers being communists. Posadas contributed to this historical progression. Some new age people also believe in extraterrestrials, usually perceived to be healers. It’s due to space operating as an empty vessel onto which our fantasies and desires are projected.
JG: Maybe having such fantasies is healthier than believing there is nothing. One of your exhibition panels states that “life can exist on other planets, in other solar systems, in other galaxies and universes.”
AS: That is from one of Posadas’s speeches. Everything is so grand, so huge, so ambitious.
JG: I liked that, while exploring your installation, I could imagine being adrift in space. The darkness, the configuration of the elements, the experts’ views conveyed via the videos, and the sound field that guides viewers through the exhibition, all played a role.
AS: The little spots of light suggest distant stars. Real space is much emptier, though, and could never work as an exhibition.
JG: The fact that your painted texts bleed through to the back of the linen panels seems unintentional, but fitting, since it suggests an alien language.
AS: My decision to use linen for the text panels has a history that is specific to Argentina. I won’t go into it here, since it needs lots of explanation.
JG: Without knowing better, I equated the sound element to alien-themed movies.
AS: I advised the sound designer to take basic notes from “L’Internationale,” the socialist anthem. I don’t think it’s noticeable, but I had to choose something. The idea was to avoid something too cliché.
JG: I’d like to jump back to one of your early projects. Robert Amigo, in the book Planetarium Film, which focuses on your film Kirpisjärvellä (2012) and touches on other early works, includes your justification for entering Torre (Tower) in the 2005 Petrobas Prize at ArteBA: “This project arises from the need to reflect on an aspiration that has haunted us since the legendary construction of the Tower of Babel. Historically, man has always wanted to raise himself up, to remove himself from the ground, to stand apart…To separate himself from the masses. As an artist, I find that the only stance from which I can make social commentary is the first person.” For me, that explanation resonates through much of your work. With Torre, it manifests as a growing structure, an observation tower shored up by the daily addition of garbage, and alludes to history, science, and technology.
AS: There was a technical trick to that project. The platform itself was really heavy, and the trash alone would not have provided enough support. If it fell from a height of two or three meters, someone could have been killed. When I learned my proposal was accepted, I had to prove it could be realized. Of course, I had no idea how to do that. Luckily, I connected with an architect who drew a mechanical system for this purpose, which secured my acceptance. I then talked to a fellow who builds movie sets, who told me that several men could hoist it up. After building a structure that provided the necessary support, they added new layers after the fair had closed for the day. Paying eight Argentinians to do that each day was cheaper than building the mechanism. Because Torre was the first of my big projects to be realized, it was a real learning experience.
JG: It’s interesting you mentioned the Tower of Babel. You’ve said that you’re a product of the Buenos Aires conceptual art scene, adding that Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles is a similar yet different proponent of conceptualism. It so happens that Meireles’s Babel (2001)—a 4.5-meter-tall cylindrical stack of radios—is in the Finnish National Gallery’s collection. What is the conceptual art background that you share?
AS: Conceptual art from South America is very different from conceptual art in other parts of the world. Some call it “hot conceptualism.” In my view, it’s much more politically engaged than Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs (1965), for example, which is just about language. It was never just about language in Argentina and Brazil. It always had an aesthetic dimension and a political dimension.
My journey to be an artist began in film school, which I hated. But they also taught us photography, so I took up black and white photography. Back then, there were no art academies in which to study. I knew little about art and zero artists. For me, art was white marble sculptures and Impressionist paintings, but some people said that my images were art, which made me curious. I then joined an art course, where I asked my super basic questions. The first work that we were shown was by Cildo. Suddenly art became very interesting. But it’s Hélio Oiticica, who was a bit older than Cildo, who is one of the biggest influences on the current show. He was also a precursor to me becoming an artist.
JG: Robert Amigo writes about the poetics of failure in connection to your work. Many of your early projects remain unfinished, and others, like your various rocket models, present a unique experiential venture each time.
AS: If you are going to make art, you have to take risks. I’m not just referring to emotional or economic risks. For the rockets, I had to learn the basics, which was difficult at first. Then, I had to make them a bit weird to convey my aesthetic point of view. The rockets have two aesthetic systems. One is the static version that you see in exhibitions, the colors and forms. The dynamic one—the various physical characteristics that affect the aesthetics of flight—involves the risk of failure. A motor may not function, a parachute may not open, and different designs produce different trajectories. I only exhibit rockets that have flown.
JG: How did The New Artist (2008–11), your robot project at Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) Robotics Institute, get off the ground?
AS: I met a CMU professor at a wedding in western Finland. At that point, the only thing I had done involving technology was Opening (2007–10), a book that photographed whoever opened it, then processed and saved the image. I believe the robot project was the first to have a social dimension.
The CMU Robotics Institute was not interested in replicating nature—no robotic dogs, for instance—instead, they focused on discovering necessary forms. The project team consisted of seven specialists, and we had a set of rules. The robot had to make art for robots, to which another robot responded. The art could not be a stationary object; it had to perform. The robots had to be able to see each other via video cameras. Outside of that, anything goes.
JG: Watching the video, which is hilarious, had me wondering how the robots related to each other.
AS: The people developing the software had to define what appreciating art entails, and they formulated their own system. Good art, for example, is something that’s 80 percent known and 20 percent unknown. But things didn’t work as expected, which prompted questions. For example, is the robot seeing something we are not seeing and, therefore, in terms of its perceptual system, are these conditions being fulfilled? Is it doing something that’s counterintuitive, or is it a software error?
JG: While your work can change radically from one thing to the next, your approach links everything together.
AS: People have complained about how my projects differ from each other. I think that if I know how to do something, why repeat it? I always like to take risks, and the next project has to include something new, which, of course, means that a risk is being taken. And if you take risks, then you also have to accept failure.
I think a lot of my work entails framing—framing in a large sense. For example, I dove into the video interviews with the experts without a plan and then searched for the discourse that would create a specific experience. Choosing quotations from Posadas’s speech and deciding how to present them was another matter. I had to practice painting letters, which produced rolls and rolls and rolls of them.
JG: How did you settle on the font that you used?
AS: My ideas are not so clear when I start a project, and I am also aphantasic, which prevents me from visualizing things. That’s impractical at times. So, one of my solutions is to make many drafts. I also talked with graphic designers and followed an online course given by a typographer in Mexico. One reference reminded me of the lettering on the protest signs that people take to demonstrations. Then I made the letters my own. It’s a process.
“We believe and accept that these beings exist” is on view at EMMA in Espoo, Finland, through August 9, 2026.
