Sarah Pinard

Sarah Pinard was born on August 10, 1987 in Issy-les-Moulineaux (France). She has lived in Paris, Barcelona and Hong Kong. She has worked with a variety of news producers: in journalism (Le Figaro, l’Express), with institutions (L’Assemblée Nationale, le Sénat), then with a polling institute (Viavoice). She also took an interest in diplomacy, with a stint at the French Consulate General in Hong Kong. She holds a doctorate in political science with unanimous congratulations from the Jury, and also received a distinction from the prestigious Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas for her thesis.

During her residency, Sarah Pinard created a work in the tradition of “space artists”, a movement born of the conquest of space. Her approach is a hybrid of political science and art.
In the 1970s, American astronomer Carl Sagan designed a descriptive plaque on one of the Pioneer space probes (1972 – 1973) launched into space for exploration purposes. The plaque featured a representation of the human species and our geographical location in the solar system. Launched like a bottle into the sea, it served to signal our existence to other species should they encounter the probes. After this initial experiment, other messages were sent: the golden disc on Voyager 1 and 2 (1977), which included music, images of daily life on Earth, greetings in several languages and more. Later, audio messages were transmitted via radio telescope (the famous Arecibo message in 1974). If we were to create a 21st-century Pioneer plaque, what would it look like?