Timothy Laskaratos

(Love you) To the Moon and Back, Is an odyssey that started in the summer of 2021  during the Greek wildfires and while Timothy was on a nightlong trip back to Athens  from the island of Ikaria. (The island got its name from Icarus’s splashdown) 

Entering a post-COVID era and in the metaphorical position of a shipwrecked,  Timothy starts writing a letter addressed to astronaut Buzz Aldrin, tackling topics of  mental health and vanity. Topics that Aldrin himself faced in his thirties on his return back  to Earth from the Moon. The letter becomes a score that Timothy performs for a period  of 10 months in Antwerp, his own Moon. 

From September 2022 till June 2023, Timothy used his dog’s walks as his studio  space in Antwerp. Starting out by walking 10km per day and ending at 15 km per day,  they walked 4,000km. During these walks Timothy would send text messages to himself,  collecting notes on vanity, grief, hunger and love. By adding up all the text messages, he  composed a script of 8 chapters, creating a composite biography using biographical  details of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, artist Paul Van Hoeydonck and artist Issabele  Cordemans. 

(love you) To the Moon and Back is a site-specific, 40’ binaural audio walk, going  under and over the Scheldt River, starting and ending at the Sint-Annatunnel. It’s a loop  on the map, where the listener walks around the water of a river that never passes twice.  It’s a trip to the moon and back. The audio walk is divided into seven site-specific  chapters and can be performed by following the instructions and scanning the QR  codes on the given map. 

The eighth chapter is a performative reading titled The Moon Ladies. A narration  based on the site specificity of the red-light district of Antwerp and two personae: the  American astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, who was the second man to walk on the moon and the  Belgian multimedia artist, Isabelle Cordemans. Aldrin’s alcohol addiction and  depression, are translated through the artistic practice of Cordemans, which attempts to  reproduce images, translating a condition called functional, visual-spatial loss. 

On view at KuNST+ vzw.