The performance Alpha Centauri speaks about those who are not usually spoken of. Those whose biographies are hidden in shame, whose uncomfortable fates are met with awkward silence. The defeated.

It tells the stories of Soviet cosmonauts who never made it to space—Sergey Kartashov, Valentin Varlamov, Dmitry Zaikin, Vitaly Bondarenko, Sergey Nefedov. Each of them could have been in Gagarin’s place, but a chain of impossible, monstrous coincidences and circumstances—at times resembling the eerie fate-driven events of Final Destination—robbed them of that chance. And for some, even of life itself.

Is there a place for them in the present? For us? For all those who ended up somewhere they never wanted to be? For those cast aside, erased by time, stripped of their dreams and their voice? And how does this eternal triumph—be it the triumph of war or the conquest of space—shape our political consciousness today?

Alexander Plotnikov’s performance does not offer answers but invites us to look at failure as an alternative way of thinking about time. A sensitive, quiet conversation. A return of names. A poetic speech that breaks the silence of history.