Around the same time that Brancusi worked on the form of “Bird in Space”, European, especially German scientists took up intensive aerodynamics research and tested the flight characteristics of objects in high speed wind tunnels. Driven by the ambition to build more powerful and precise weapons with greater reach and capacity, Germany became a pioneer of this technology. The world’s first hypervelocity wind tunnel was built in Peenemünde, where Wernher von Braun directed work on a long-range missile program.

It was this wind tunnel which was dismantled after the Second World War as part of the U.S. “Operation Paperclip,” shipped across the Atlantic and rebuilt in Silver Spring, Maryland – a knowledge transfer that might be unique in history. On the same premises – today home to a U.S. Air Force complex – Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle deliberately connects the achievements of modernity, in art as well as in technology and science, with the present: Together with scientists and engineers, he exposed a model of Brancusi’s sculpture to speed ten times that of sound in Wind Tunnel 9. The shock waves produced during these tests were recorded with high speed cameras – a technique called Schlieren photography, which was also developed by German scientists during World War II, originally for ballistic tests.

Manglano-Ovalle in his current project once again critically examines the values of modernity and its occasionally tragic consequences for our world today.

On the occasion of the exhibition, the fourth volume of the publication series of the Schering Stiftung has been publisheded with argobooks. It includes essays by David Familian and Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Charlotte Klonk as well as Thomas Wagner. You can order it here.