On January 23 2020 Oliver Chanarin, together with a team of physicists at the Centre of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen, conducted a historic experiment; the reenactment of Marcel Duchamp’s 3 Stoppages (1913) in zero gravity. Duchamp made 3 Stoppages by dropping a one meter length of string on the floor three times, and tracing the line each time with a pencil. ”The experiment was made in 1913 to imprison and preserve forms obtained through chance, through my chance,” Duchamp explained in an interview in 1964. For the re-enactment of 3 Stoppages a one meter length of string was dropped 110 meters in a sealed capsule through a vacuum; it’s shape, as it floated free of the forces of gravity were scanned in three dimensions. Chanarin paid homage to Duchamp as he released the capsule, together with Dr. Olympia Kyriopoulos, in the control room at the Drop Tower in the Applied Space Technology and Microgravity. It took twelve months of meticulous planning and four seconds of weightlessness to create Gravity is the attraction on between distant objects; a sequel to Duchamp’s iconic artwork for the twenty first century.

Special thanks to Dr. Olympia Kyriopoulos, (@OLYMPIASPACE) Thorben Könemann, Roehl Oliver, Roland Kinzel at GDV systems and the team at ZARM.