The American flag seems to be fluttering, but there’s no atmosphere on the moon, thus no wind…! Even before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon as the first man ever in 1969, people were already arguing that it was impossible. And still there’s a large group of people that think the moon landings were faked in a film studio. Do you believe it?

For one of my graduation projects I digged into the conspiracy theories about the moon landings. One of the questions was: how can I tell this story in an interesting way in 2016. Through an experience as a pop-up stand on festivals, I remind people of these missions, and provoke an opinion about the stories and theories. The final work is a spherical book with pages that are 40x40cm big, with which I tried to catch the big- and impressiveness of the subject. The book contains six pages that each tell one conspiracy theory, for example about the seemingly fluttering flag.

However, with conspiracy theories, a big part of (not) believing them is about looking beyond the headlines. If you go on the internet looking for theories like these, you can be knees deep into some story about 9/11 within five minutes. The trick is to also look for stories that debunk the theories, or show the other side of the story. This can also be applied to the stories about the moon landings, which is why the debunk-theories are also hidden in this book. But: you have to be open for it and actually take the time to look for them!

During our graduation exposition I displayed this book in a prototype of the ‘experience’, inside a dark dome. To have the reader experience something like a moon landing I filled the floor with “moon sand”. Available for the reader inside the dome was a pair of headphones playing this fragment of the Apollo 11 landing.