I don't know why I find this little figurine embedded in moon dust so strangely moving. Perhaps because it resonates, as a dimimutive and distant compadre, with The Awakening . Perhaps because memorialization always has a sadness, and this stranded little objet d'art has sadness in spades. Perhaps because it reminds me also of Professor Joy's posts about artifacts that have lost their context and yet somehow continue to mean (see especially her mini essay on Anglo-Saxon fragments sold on eBay posted in the comments to this post, and her ruminations on artwork sent beyond the horizon of short futures into the vastness of deeper ones).
Nonetheless, here it is: a 3" aluminum sculpture called "Fallen Astronaut" that is the only piece of art humans have intentionally placed on a heavenly body other than earth.
Courtesy of the wonderfully weird and truly inspired Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society and the always surprising boing boing.
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