FAILING FORWARD (2023)
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In Failing Forward, Marjolein Blom touches on the core of what connects science, art, and life: that all are uncertain exercises with unpredictable outcomes. Her photographic work capturing the major and minor mysteries from the everyday world is interwoven with images from the NASA archive, depicting scientists working on spacecraft models.
Sixty years ago, during the so-called Space Age, optimism about scientific progress seemed boundless. Yet, while technologies from the space industry became embedded in our daily lives, the gap between science and the everyday world seemed to widen. The complexity of scientific explanations poses a challenge for non-experts, resulting in a relationship between science and the general public merely built on trust. This fragile bond has become increasingly unstable in the past decade, with scientific facts often being dismissed as opinions.
Ambiguity and unpredictability, however, are fundamental elements of the scientific process, just as they are in life itself. While oscillating between the enigmatic and the specific, Failing Forward takes science as a metaphor for our everyday lives — a kaleidoscopic collection of oddities that revolves around truth-finding, wonder and the illusion of human control.
