Adduction is the anatomical opposite of abduction; it refers to the movement of limbs inwards towards the centre of the body. The alien autopsy is an adduction. It reverses the fear of alien abduction, it is the alien rather than the human which is abducted and subject to experimentation, inwards to earth rather than outwards to sky. As with much UFO lore, the threat of invasion becomes simultaneously a pretext for aggression and fantasy of victimhood. The alien autopsy is always a hoax, and for that reason, this one isn’t particularly. It is a fake-dead fake-body, so we can get close to it as a dead body. As with all horror, the emotions are real.

A cork board is a technology that involves stripping and framing the bark of a tree, primarily for the purpose of organising increments of time. Cork boards are often advertised as ‘self-healing’; their desirable qualities are receptivity and resilience to penetration (for the purposes of structure, order, memory). Every star is a hole that the surface is attempting to heal. The anti-accurate night sky becomes an allegorical device for the gap between a thing and its representation, and the way that this gap can both create and diminish meaning and wonder. Like the alien autopsy, paintings of the sky are always a hoax.

The Himmelsscheibe von Nebra (Nebra sky disc) is an Early Bronze Age bronze disc, the earliest known depiction of astronomical phenomena. It was discovered by metal detectorists in Germany in 1999, who immediately sold it on the black market. One of its speculated purposes is to represent a lunisolar calendar rule, demonstrating the moment when it is necessary to synchronise the calendars via the insertion of a leap month (a ‘missing time event’). Despite its relatively simple appearance, the Nebra sky disc is remarkably accurate and demonstrates a high level of astronomical understanding. The archaeologist Harald Meller speculates that this precise time-keeping technology was necessary for legitimising the emergence of state power. He posits that in this period, a shift took place from rulers as representatives of the community before the gods, to representatives of gods before the community^[1]. My paintings on cork board are remarkably inaccurate and demonstrate a low level of astronomical understanding.