Preview

Find A Fallen Star

Text by Mirthe van Popering, photos by Regine Petersen

Have you ever dreamt of finding a fallen star? The new exhibition in Foam, Find a Fallen Star, is all about these magical outer space entities and presents an intriguing visual narrative on stardust, storytelling and human life. Subbacultcha attended the preview.

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Regine Petersen – Find a Fallen Star (20 March – 3 May)

Find a Fallen Star is the result of an extensive project that (re)covers multi-faceted stories on various meteor falls in different places. Each of these meteorites contains fragments of a past reality – they are baby pictures of early life, one could say. Sometimes these rocks from the past collide with the present, and a new story is born. Editor of these stories is Regine Petersen, a young German photographer who was awarded an exhibition in Foam’s 3h space for young talent as the winner of the Outset | Unseen Exhibition Fund.

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Stars Fell on Alabama

Once upon a time, on 30 September 1954 to be exact, an eight pound meteorite crashed through the roof of a house in Sylacauga, Alabama, hitting Ann Hodges on the hip while she was having a nap on her sofa. She suffered extensive bruising – but survived. It is with this curious event, in which a 4.6 billion years old meteorite collided with a 31 year old human being, that Regine Petersen begins the first chapter of Find a Fallen Star.

Nearly 60 years after the actual event, Petersen started investigating the Hodges meteorite, assembling archive press cuttings, interview transcripts, eye witness reports and found images. History and memory, bits and pieces of fact and fiction go hand in hand in Petersen’s narrative – a narrative that is never complete or absolute. The found materials are complemented with quiet, contemplative photographs taken on the impact site by Petersen herself.

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Fragments and The Indian Iron

What began with the story of a single stone, resulted in the unravelling of new chapters. Fragments tells the viewer the story of a group of children recovering a meteorite in a field near their homes in post-war Germany. The Indian Iron concentrates on a more recent event in India, where two nomads in the desert of Rajasthan witnessed a meteorite fall.

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Foam is the first to combine all the chapters of Regine Petersen’s project in one exhibition. An exhibition that suitably appears together with the recently published book on the series.

Find a Fallen Star opened together with Broomberg & Chanarin’s To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light and Flashbulb Memories, Ash Grey Prophecies by Geert Goiris. All exhibitions are free for Subbacultcha members.

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