Abstract
This paper considers Tom Sachs (1966-)'s Space Program, a functional yet terrestrial replica of the NASA Apollo Lunar Mission, and Sachs's studio practice more generally as a strategic repurposing of bricolage as theorized by Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009). Bricolage, a strategy of problem solving based on re-using materials at hand rather than inventing new ones, has been demonstrated to reinforce a misleading perception of reality as a collection of independent closed systems. Within Levi-Strauss's discussion of art, however, can be found a path to a more disruptive form of bricolage able to lead artist and audiences to find meaning in the world without reference to inside and outside, self and other. Sachs's ＂American Bricolage,＂ as he calls his practice, expands upon Levi-Strauss's discussion of bricolage and art to model a recyclative practice that engages and produces difference independent from binary limits of modernist thought. In a Landing Excursion Module made of lumber salvaged from police barricades and stocked with James Brown (1933-2006) records and Jack Daniels Whiskey, Sachs, like many artists interested in the history of space exploration, reflects upon the earthbound needs NASA addressed rather than the anachronistic fantasies of neo-colonialism it embodied. This paper proposes to discuss Sachs Space Program, including the first stage of a new Mars Mission, as an exploration of late 20^(th) and early 21^(st) century life and an opportunity to reimagine life and art on earth.