By Nicole Breskin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
SOHO — A lost astronaut went grocery shopping recently at Whole Foods on the Bowery, but she was told to take off before she even made it to the produce section.
“Now that you’re down on Earth, you could at least take off your spacesuit,” one Whole Foods employee barked at the moon woman. The manager said her presence was a disturbance.
“It’s sad,” said the astronaut, who's really a Spaniard named Alicia Framis. “Astronauts have to eat, too.”
Framis, 42, has been masquerading around Manhattan for a performance arts piece called “Lost Astronaut.” It’s part of Performa 09, a festival with 150 artists performing 110 productions across the city until Nov. 22.
The performers are exploring this year's theme, futurism, through dance, sound, sculptures, food, video and print. Framis plays a character who's been displaced from space and longs to live on the moon. In the meantime, she wanders Manhattan to find inspiration for her future lunar life.
“It’s the most intense [piece in the festival], because she’s out there every day,” said Performa 09 curator Defne Ayas. “She becomes a spectacle every day.”
As part of her earthly exploration, Framis has slurped noodles in Chinatown, gone row boating in Central Park and moonwalked in Times Square. Her spacesuit is real, having traveled to space on a Russian ship in 1973, and she paid $25,415 for it.
Sitting in her base camp at 15 Wooster St., Framis showed DNAinfo her feet. Shoe soles had to be glued to the bottom of the spacesuit since outer space is not as tough on footwear as New York City asphalt. Every day she gets instructions that guide her Manhattan wanderings. Some of those scripts have ween written by the New Yorker's Michael Schulman and novelist Brian Keith Jackson.
One script told her to "consider every object" and "engage with the knowledgeable staff" at Babeland, a sex shop. Another day, she was told to bow to one of the lion sculptures at the New York Public Library main branch.
“I created instructions that were up for interpretation,” said Shelley Jackson, a professor at the New School. She told the astronaut to colonize the Big Apple by planting flags.
“I thought discovery was the most essential activity of an astronaut,” Jackson says. “But what’s funny about doing this in Manhattan is that it’s totally discovered.”
For this script, Framis flagged items in the 4th Street Food Co-Op in the East Village.
Framis said the performance has made her one with the astronaut.
“It’s not like there’s a stage,” she said. “I get tired and sweaty walking around in this suit in Manhattan, and that is part of the reality for my lost astronaut, too.”
In all, though, Framis said the best part of her day is interacting with New Yorkers.
“They don’t just look at me like I’m crazy,” she says, rolling her wrists covered in heavy space gloves. “They’re curious and they really want to know what I’m doing.”
When cab driver Arbind Singh, of Queens, picked up the astronaut last week, he was shocked. Being a city hack, Singh thought he had seen just about everything. Not so.
“She sat in the front seat and didn’t explain anything,” Singh said. “I was very intrigued. I’d like to stick with her for more.”
