POEHALI!

2011

HD, colour, 3’36”

Poehali! (“Let's go!”) was the phrase uttered by Yuri Gagarin during the launch of his Vostok 1 spaceship on April 12, 1961.

For us, born in the early 70’s, space flight was an everyday topic of childhood games and conversations. It was an integral part of the Socialist propaganda as well, offering a dream that was worth devoting your life to – and was actually feasible, if you try really hard. Then the Star Wars trilogy came out, revealing new and exciting perspectives of a future life in space. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, space programs everywhere gradually slowed down the pace and lost a great deal of the public interest. And now, you don’t necessarily have to spend a lifetime achieving your dream – some cash is just enough to send you up there as a space tourist.

Fifty years after the flight of Gagarin we asked our friends to collect all sorts of cosmic memorabilia they had – toys, hand-made scale models, autographed photos of our astronauts, Star Wars figurines – and set them on their own last flight in space. Most probably, marking the end of the space flight dreams – for our generation, at least.