“Disaster in space: an astronaut is dead. But is he dead? Closed in a perfect capsule, his body is intact. Is he alive? His voice is not heard by man, his thought is still. All that one knows is that his body -dead? alive?- turns in space around the earth at enormous speed. On a clear night, a luminous point crosses the sky from one horizon to the other. Sailors check their course against that point; on silent islands mothers show the miracle of something -a man- that moves amongst the stars and is distinguished from them by movement. He has a name. Russian? American? A common name, a sound like the sound of a star´s name, but a man´s name. Dead? Alive?
Perhaps we will never hear of such a things, perhaps a disaster in space will never occur. But what would occur if it should occur? Perhaps nothing more than what is written in this brief hypothetical account. Or perhaps everything in the world would change because man could not support the idea of a perfect cadaver or a live man without voice and without thought turning in space, beyond contact and beyond understanding. But how many perfect cadavers and live men without voice and without thought surround us every day on earth? Why must we await- and fear- a disaster in space, in order to become aware of our world?
Matta, 1966
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