Why and how we go to space | e-book

SPACE IS THE PLACE | VC1 | WS20
WHY AND HOW WE GO IN SPACE

An interactive e-book speculates on space imperialism through digital collages 

The space race is an extraordinary human activity and ambition.
While many people anxiously ask “when” and “where”, this project explores more radical questions, starting with “how” and “why” we find ourselves at the dawn of a new space race.

The Chinese lunar missions fortify an already stable authority of the Chinese regime at the international level and Western satellites host a huge amount of citizens’ personal data, while the entry of private individuals into this cinema announces dynamics that are anything but democratic. Do the successes of the new space conquistadors really belong to everyone? The most violent and tragic consequences of the colonial processes were the atrocious death of millions of innocent people and the elimination of entire folks; mass deportations took place and slavery spread, that is, the unconditional exploitation of slaves, dehumanized and considered as animals or objects. The conquered territories were explored, resources were extracted according to an unsustainable linear economy. The same process, both directly and indirectly, destroyed more than fifty million hectares of forests in 2019 alone, carbonizing the biodiversity they contained (wwf.it). The linear approach to production and consumption, in true contrast to the planet’s natural ecological cycles, has formed boundless landfills which include waste whose decomposition is millenary or completely unsustainable. Mass migration, habitat destruction and global warming are equally profound and dramatic implications that cause humanitarian crises and change the balance of the global ecosystem. The design of the current reality also has an enormous impact on the perspectives and psychological health of the individual. The humanistic, enlightenment and positivist illusion of the man who places himself at the center of the universe has proved a failure; what centuries ago – or decades in some cases – seemed an infinite reality, capable of sustaining and adapting to unconditional progress, now presents itself clearly for what it is, a small blue planet, as it was shown in the photograph taken by William Anders in 1968 on board of Apollo 8, “Rising of the Earth”.

A series of digital collages takes up the archetypes of the past and present and projects them into future scenarios, such as the Moon or Mars. The project develops on the critical idea that the new colonies of the solar system risk to become the theater for repeats of already known stories, because the scenography will change but not the protagonists.

The images are digital collages in black and white, whose plausible compositions combine contexts and backgrounds of the “space race” (with public domain photographs from NASA) with iconographic elements of the past and present, which trace the history of colonialism and imperialism up to the contemporary ecological issues.

The sign
The essential use of black and white coherently joints the different elements together. The monochromatic approach puts the subjects in the foreground into dialogue with the background, highlighting the role of light and contrast. The viewer’s perception, free of the language of colors, can focus on the recognition of emblematic and indexical signs and can pay attention to the relationship between subject and context; the symbols representing the darkest instances of colonialism and the innovative context of space are connected. The figurative synthesis of these informations can raise deep questions, in order to better understand the implications of the new space missions of the near future. The simple composition and the perspective layout of the scenes create a linear communication and the perception is guided through the hierarchy and the juxtaposition of the elements. In order to make the narrative more solid and raise the desired issues, each collage is accompanied by a short description that provides the reader with the context. The details suggest a summary of the plausible situations, stimulating curiosity and deeper personal speculations.

© Fabio Bonaldo 2021 | Reproduction of images without consent is a violation of copyright.