With contributions by: James Bridle (artist and writer), Kristine Dannenberg (Swedish National Space Agency), iLiana Fokianaki (curator), Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei(philologist), Sam Hultin (artist), Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (researcher digital culture), Charl Landvreugd (artist and researcher), Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman (radio artist, vocalist and composer), Sven Lütticken (art historian), Felicity Scott (architecture theorist) and Anton Vidokle (artist). Read more about the programme here.

With organizations such as Space X pushing to colonize Mars in the next decade, corporations planning to terraform planets as a back-up for the billionaire class to flee from planetary climate catastrophe, and the Trump administration announcing to export nationalism to space through its “Space Army”, we are witnessing the emergence of an authoritarian and corporatist interplanetary order.

Interplanetary Species Society instead demands a sustainable earth, before any interplanetary engagements can take place. The equality of planetary life must be the foundation for the future of interplanetary life, and new extraplanetary perspectives must go hand in hand with the deepening of intra-planetary understanding. ISS further rejects terms such as “space colonization” and calls for interplanetary cooperation instead, in which humans learn to understand themselves not as “pioneers” but as guests.

During the founding assembly of the ISS, various speakers from the field of art, architecture, design, theory and science, will gather to discuss and propose alternative conditions for our becoming interplanetary species, from interplanetary infrastructures to our linguistic engagements with non-human subjectivities and visions of emancipatory cosmic governance.

The assembly will take place in an installation developed by artist Jonas Staal that proposes an alternative politicized biosphere in which humans, neo-constructivist ammonites, proletarian plantae and meteorites gather, as an imaginative infrastructure for our becoming interplanetary species. Situated 25 meters underground in Reaktorhallen in Stockholm, which used to house the first nuclear research facility of Sweden, the assembly literally turns into our planet to reflect on what our future as an interplanetary species could and should be.

Due to limited seating, we request registration and full day participation to the congress.Registration here

ISS is a project by Jonas Staal, curated by Edi Muka, as part of the manifestationChoreographies of the Social. Installation by Jonas Staal in collaboration with architect Paul Kuipers and designer Remco van Bladel. Production by Younes Bouadi and Evelien Scheltinga (Studio Jonas Staal), in collaboration with Public Art Agency Sweden and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Installation on view 12am–6pm, August 13–24, 2019
Part of the manifestation Choreographies of the Social

Made possible with support of the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands