A vintage street scene featuring a group of people talking in front of a building labeled 'Winzergenossenschaft'. A green truck and a classic car are parked on the cobblestone road. The building has signs indicating a bank and a winemaker's house.

David Avazzadeh / Connected Archives

On May 20th 2017 at a fleamarket in Vienna, I stumbled upon five metal slide storage boxes with more than five hundred diapositives dated from 1958 to 1961.
After
going through the process of removing the frames from
the slides, cleaning, scanning and chronologically ordering, the diapositives turned out to be a documentation of research done by a group of extraterrestrials who, disguised as humans,
traveled to earth in the early sixties in search for a habitable planet and documented
their endeavour with an
analogue camera and a journal titled earth is a strange place'
After two years their research was completed and they left for their home planet.
Due to complications during their take off, amongst other things they had to leave the exposed film and the journal
behind.
This is a true story about the synthesis of realism and fiction, preconcieved opinions about the truth as well as the longing for belonging and reminiscing of a future past.