An assembly of space-themed objects by Tom Sachs may look somewhat naked to those familiar with the full panoply of a public Sachs offering. Animated by the conviction that all art objects entail a ritual dimension, he has mounted large-scale installations designed to draw visitors into active scenarios of space exploration. Whether in the cavernous volume of the Park Avenue Armory or in virtual space certified by NFT tokens, to engage with his work in these circumstances has been to surrender one’s customary stance of passive spectatorship directed toward this or that self-contained object of art.

00:00:00 Tom Sachs: Hi I’m Tom Sachs I’m Acquavella Gallery, this is the last couple of days that you can see my show Spaceships so I thought I’d take a few minutes to walk you through it. 00:00:11 Tom Sachs: I’m standing in front of the Golden Record the voices from Earth. This is a facsimile in 24 carat gold leaf and pyrography of the record that’s bolted to the front of Voyager, the first object to leave the solar system.

00:00:00 Tom Sachs: I just got a advance copy, so I’m gonna open it and show you what it looks like. 00:00:09 Tom Sachs: When you open it, you move the whole print to one side and then you hinge it open like that. 00:00:19 Tom Sachs: In here are the important documents, let’s see what’s inside. 00:00:23 Tom Sachs: Scan this QR code, and yours will be a unique QR code taking you to a place on the blockchain where you can attach your wallet.

00:00:05 Tom Sachs: Okapi. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

00:00:00 Tom Sachs: iD magazine June 2021. Check it out. Look we got a whole spread and were going to make a zine out of this. Here goes. 00:00:56 Tom Sachs: So now I have all the pages to the zine in the proper order. My front cover, everything in the middle, and then my back cover. 00:01:04 Tom Sachs: Now I’m gonna collate, so I take the back cover and the front cover off and tape them together.

00:02:01 Tom Sachs: So welcome to this special edition of office hours. I’m Tom Sachs and tonight we have a very special guest. Adam Steltzner, who’s chief engineer of Mars 2020 that’s at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But he’s also chief engineer of Mars Sample Return campaign, which is a 3 mission or three ship mission to return a sample from Mars, and we’ll talk about that in depth in a few minutes.

00:00:06 Narrator: In development, failure is always an option. 00:00:13 Narrator: Failure is an opportunity for improvement. 00:00:20 Narrator: Testing in a controlled environment will only get you so far. 00:00:31 Narrator: Eventually we need the real world. 00:00:38 Narrator: Versatility breeds durability. 00:00:50 Narrator: In the studio. We are specialists. 00:01:03 Radio: We’re go for floor scoring. 00:01:08 Narrator: We are athletes. 00:01:20 Narrator: We push our equipment to meet our unique demands.

00:00:08 Tom Sachs: Good morning, thanks for your patience i’m Tom Sachs and welcome to my show handmade paintings at Acquavella Gallery. On 79th and 5th in New York City, I’m gonna take you through the show. We’re looking about dozen paintings today, and if you have some questions, send em in. And little time for Q&A. 00:00:29 Tom Sachs: Let’s just start. With Krusty, Krusty the Clown, and so this is about 6 feet with a synthetic polymer on canvas.

00:01:52 Tom Sachs: Welcome to office hours. Geodesic Dome episode. Your questions. 00:02:05 Tom Sachs: From at SOLJ dot R will hot glue. And plywood fix criticism? Really fuck them. Of course it can. You just have to do the work. It doesn’t matter what they think, it only matters what you think. If that’s what you mean by criticism, I’m not even sure what criticism is a critic I always think is a person with an idea.

00:00:07 Sam Ratanarat: Understand your environment. 00:00:12 Sam Ratanarat: Understand your resources. 00:00:17 Sam Ratanarat: See the potential. 00:00:21 Sam Ratanarat: Do the work. 00:00:25 Sam Ratanarat: Manifest. 00:00:29 Sam Ratanarat: Realise. 00:00:32 Buckminster Fuller: We need to find within technology that there is something we can do, which is capable of taking care of everybody. And to demonstrate that this is so, that’s what geodesic domes are about. 00:00:55 Buckminster Fuller: Don’t fight forces, use them.