One of the speculative thesis of Vesić’s research is that such “scientific payload” (the artifacts) realize the ideal autonomy of art, being out of human reach and thus ideally separated from life. They become “useful art” only within the contingent chances/probability of realization of their primary goal of the objects of communication, carrying some scientific materials/data about the Earth and being found in Space by some kind of intelligent Other. Vesić argues that such communication signals, remain chained to the Western humanist pictorial tradition or “remain in the orbit of the gaze outlined by the perspective as symbolic form”. Therefore, as she claims “although the (non)expected receiver of the image is the distant Other, the unimaginable Other, the image-as-message, returns to the gaze of its sender, creating the boomerang effect”. The image of “universal humans” returns to the Earth as the voice of well-known white enlightened colonizer.

Jelena Vesic is an independent curator, writer, editor and lecturer. She is active in the field of publishing, research and exhibition practice and intertwines political theory and contemporary art. Her most recent exhibitions are Story on Copy (Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart) and We are Family (with Natasa Ilic) presented in Pawilion, Poznan, part of www.d-est.com. Vesić also curated Lecture Performance (MoCA, Belgrade and the Kölnischer Kunstverein, with Anja Dorn and Kathrin Jentjens) as well as the collective exhibition project Political Practices of (post-) Yugoslav Art, which critically examined art historical concepts and narratives of Yugoslav art after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Her recent book, On Neutrality (with Vladimir Jeric Vlidi and Rachel O'Reilly) is part of the Non-Aligned Modernity edition of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade.