Brinkley Warren
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Cosmic · Legal Conceptualism

I Own the Southern Cross

2012–ongoing · Wellington, New Zealand

I Own the Southern Cross

A legal claim to the six stars of the Southern Cross—Mimosa, Acrux, Gacrux, Alpha Crucis B, Decrux, Juxta Crucem—filed and accepted by the US legal system on December 6, 2012, notarized in New Zealand, registered with the US Copyright Office, every star specified to SAO catalog number, spectral class, right ascension, and declination.

The legal argument reads Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 with the precision of a contracts attorney: the treaty prohibits national appropriation of celestial bodies and is silent on private individuals. No existing legal instrument prevents the claim. This is not bravado; it is a researched legal position, and Warren became only the second private individual in history to hold such an accepted claim.

The Statement of Intention ends with the work's philosophical heart: should an entity from outer space wish to contest the claim, Warren proposes resolving it “over a few Margaritas and tacos.” The joke performs a complete political argument—the proper response to contested sovereignty is not war but shared meals and negotiation.

A Fulbright artist from the United States, in New Zealand, claiming the constellation on the New Zealand flag: the historical power relationship between hemispheres, inverted in the register of space law.

Gallery

Crux — wide-field astrophotograph.
Crux — wide-field astrophotograph.
Crux (IAU chart) — the six stars of the claim.
Crux (IAU chart) — the six stars of the claim.
Filing, page 1.
Filing, page 1.
Claim of ownership (US filing).
Claim of ownership (US filing).
Claim of ownership, continued.
Claim of ownership, continued.
Claim of ownership, continued.
Claim of ownership, continued.
Claim of ownership, continued.
Claim of ownership, continued.

Lineage — Yves Klein's immaterial zones again, but where Klein invented private ritual, Warren works inside the actual legal infrastructure of the state — closer to the legal conceptualism and institutional critique of artists who use contracts, deeds, and statutes as medium (the certificate works of Lawrence Weiner; the corporate and bureaucratic forms appropriated in the conceptual tradition). The celestial claim also engages the long history of artists laying claim to the sky and the void, from the Romantic sublime forward, here secularized into copyright filings and SAO catalog numbers.

Apparatus — the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (Article 2), a US Copyright Office registration, New Zealand notarization, SAO star-catalog numbers, spectral classes, and coordinates. The legal instrument is the medium.