VENICE.- From the development of human settlements on the Moon to the asteroid mining of rare mineral and metals—the wild imaginaries of extraction-driven growth have, quite literally, transcended the boundaries of the Earth. This displacement of resource exploitation from the exhausted Earth to its ‘invisible’ backstages— celestial bodies, planets, and ultimately, the Moon itself—calls for an urgent debate on the impact this shift will have on our understanding of land, resources and the commons. Down to Earth critically unpacks the project of space mining through the perspective of resources. It starts from the following questions: How does this new iteration of the space race, wrapped in the false promises of endlessly available resources, depart from the existing extractivist logic of capitalism and its destructive environmental and social effects on the ground? How will the ongoing privatisation of space, characterised by a sharp turn towards private companies as main actors in the exploitation of space resources, affect the current status of extraterrestrial bodies as a form of ‘planetary commons’? What are the materialities of space mining—its logistics, technologies, infrastructures and workers—and their relationship to the existing geopolitical power hierarchies? And finally, how are architects to mediate critically the ramifications of these material fictions, rooted in the existing paradigms of growth?
Designed as mock-ups of the Moon’s landscapes, ‘lunar laboratories’ have emerged in recent years as a default feature that many institutions and private companies around the world use as infrastructure for testing different mining technologies. However, within the context of speculative economies of the space mining industry, the role of the lunar laboratories seems to go beyond being merely spaces meant for carrying out scientific experiments, instead appearing also as media studios for the production of imagery of human technologies on the Moon.
The exhibition Down to Earth uses the lunar laboratory as a site for unpacking the tech industry’s space exploration narratives. With the space of the Pavilion itself turned into a lunar laboratory, a stage where the performance of extraction takes place, Down to Earth focuses on the unveiling of the backstages of the space mining project, offering another way of seeing the Moon that goes beyond the current optics of the Anthropocene.
Exhibition content
1. The lunar laboratory
Designed as mock-ups of the Moon’s landscapes, during the last couple of years, lunar laboratories have emerged as a default feature of many of the institutions and private companies around the world, as an infrastructure for the testing of different mining technologies. The exhibition takes the lunar laboratory as a site for unpacking the tech industry’s narratives of space exploration. With the space of the Pavilion itself turning into a lunar laboratory, a stage where the performance of extraction takes place, Down to Earth focuses on the unveiling of the backstages of the space mining project. It features three different projects developed throughout the course of the research—the film, the workshop, and the book.
2. The film
Created in collaboration with photographer and video artist Armin Linke, the film features shots, archival footage, and conversations with researchers, lawyers, and representatives of the space mining industry and organisations based in Luxembourg, and beyond. The language of the film is English (with subtitles).
3. The workshop
The workshop, titled How to: mind the Moon, is curated by Lev Bratishenko, Francelle Cane and Marija Marić as a collaboration between the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia and the Canadian Centre for Architecture as well as an international group of researchers working on the issues of space mining and/or material histories including: Anastasia Kubrak, Jane Mah Hutton, Amelyn Ng, Bethany Rigby and Fred Scharmen.The workshop’s output will result in the production of a material bank featuring the political, environmental and racial histories of five construction- related lunar materials.
4. The book
The book, titled Staging the Moon, features contributions by curators and a selection of photographs by artists Armin Linke and Ronni Campana. It introduces the curators’ research on the topic of space mining, revolving around themes such as the entanglements of space mining and media, the development of legal frameworks around mineral extraction in outer space, and the possibilities of planetary commons. The book is designed by studio OK-RM (London, United Kingdom) and published by Spector Books (Leipzig, Germany).
“From the development of human settlements on the Moon to asteroid mining—the wild imaginaries of extraction-driven growth have, quite literally, transcended the boundaries of Earth. This displacement of mineral exploitation from the exhausted Earth to its ‘invisible’ backstages—celestial bodies, planets, and ultimately, the Moon itself—calls for an urgent debate on the impact this shift will have on our understandings of land, resources, and the commons, both on Earth and beyond it. Described as a ‘rising star in the space industry’ and a ‘pioneer in the exploration and utilisation of space resources’, Luxembourg, whose own economy was built on iron mining and steel production, appears as a key starting point to critically approach space mining—a question that goes beyond the scale of its territory, and rather appears as a shared, planetary concern.
Quote from the Down to Earth project by Francelle Cane and Marija Marić.
