Even the very first humans looked up to the celestial vault in an attempt to make some sense of our existence. They searched the stars for answers to the most fundamental questions of the human experience: Who are we? Where are we going? Since the beginning of time as we know it, we’ve looked up, searching for a story written in light. Here, we are all immersed in a story that we now know as the universe. Our Teotihuacan ancestors built cities that conversed with the stars. The Maya created shadow serpents that descend their pyramids on the equinox. The Mexica carefully carved monumental stones to tell the story of the Sun and the passage of time. These cultures, like others around the world, had an intimate relationship with the cosmos. This relationship was evident in their song and dance, in their temples and poems. Cultural and artistic expressions centering on the cosmos reach back to our ancestors.  

We have gone from connecting points in the sky to imagining traveling between them. Artists and writers were the first to conceive of extraterrestrial journeys. Suffice it to say, one of the first journeys to the moon occurred in literature: in a tale penned by Lucian of Samosata, eighteen centuries before the Apollo 11 mission. Furthermore, many other fantasies preceded and anticipated these journeys. In their imaginations, humans have travelled from planet to planet and invented lunar and Martian societies. We dreamed of making these journeys through literature long before science and technology. Art has always been leagues ahead of science in our journey through the cosmos. Today, artists continue to create imaginaries that contrast with contemporary space programs, as a way of glimpsing alternatives that incorporate critical discourse and take into consideration the ethical, environmental, and philosophical implications of a human presence in other worlds.  

The space programs developed by private agencies and companies are replicating paradigms that have utterly failed to create justice, equity, and coexistence, not only among humans, but for the beyond-human: other animals and entities like rivers and mountains.  

From a Western perspective of progress and evolution, space activities bring with them scientific and technocratic advances. During the twentieth century, the space age and the future of humanity were imagined as taking place in the stars, developing through the technological deployment of rockets, ships, and artificial biospheres. This, in addition to Cold War dynamics and military development through space technologies, was presented as an example of international collaboration for the benefit of Earth. 

Today, these dynamics have begun to be eclipsed by a new agenda in space activity. The emergence of private interests, which garnered support from the United States government during Barack Obama’s term, promised to accelerate technological development, guided by the logic of the free market, investment returns, and the search for economic profit. In this so-called space economy, the cosmos becomes a territory not only to be explored, but exploited. The mining and extraction of space resources link this new economy with the old rules of capitalism. Space is a new territory that awaits an owner—human, of course.

We’ve seen this story before, here on our home planet. Our disdain for the most primary and fundamental elements is pushing our planet into an era of hostility and chemical disruption. As a result of humanity’s power, the oceans have acidified, the stratosphere is contracting more and more, and the planet’s temperature is rising to levels never before experienced by humans. Our disregard has stripped air, water, and stone of meaning, making visible the greatest planetary tragedy of our era. And this disregard seems to be rapidly spreading to other areas of the universe.  

Imaginaries of space are rooted in the capitalist, patriarchal, imperialist, and colonial apparatus. Their visions of the future speak of colonizing Mars, of building up economies through the appropriation and exploitation of cosmic resources, of the infinite expansion of humanity beyond the confines of Earth, and even of relocating our most polluting industries onto other celestial bodies. It seems likely that in the near future we will see the dawn of a cosmological era that could be called the Anthropocosm: an era characterized by human interference in the cosmos. Let’s not forget that there are already around 130 million particles of space debris suspended in our planet’s orbit. It would come as no surprise to one day contemplate the moon and see an irregular surface, like an apple with bites taken out of it, or to look at Saturn through a telescope and find gaps in its rings. The Anthropocosm would be the result of the continuation of the extractive practices and human expansionism that already benefit the structures of power existing on Earth today. 

Thinking about our relationship with the cosmos in the era of rockets and astronauts could have been an avenue for imagining a new form of coexistence, one that would not repeat the mistakes we’ve made on Earth;  a kind of black canvas, upon which we could write new stories unhampered by the inertia of the multiple crises we are going through here. Although the opportunity appears to be wasted, space is inexhaustible. It can still offer us a new beginning. We can project possibilities upon it and begin to heal the crisis of imagination in which we find ourselves today. We could conceive of new ways of inhabiting the Moon, without depending on the concept of property. We could reimagine the concept of the nation-state from an interplanetary perspective rather than drawing arbitrary lines to divide a celestial body, and we could explore new models of social organization.

Just as space forces science and technology to rethink and redesign solutions for space travel, we must also reimagine the cultural and social paradigms we will employ in space. Space is a black canvas where we can paint a new way of existence, rather than export the failures of our planet; a place where we may project visions that generate the optimism missing from the Earth today.

If the great advances in astronautical engineering have failed to create new imaginaries, perhaps we need to refocus our attention on what is happening in the art and culture of space. In the last decades, we have seen how Afrofuturism has appropriated science fiction and space travel to create new meanings for certain African American populations. George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic descended from a UFO in their concerts as a way to transport the audience to a world of freedom and psychedelia. Octavia Butler wrote science fiction combined with historical fiction to travel back in time and explore the brutal realities of slavery, and thus reveal her own identity. In more recent years, we have seen more imaginaries born of Indigenous futurisms around the world. In these, the future is reimagined through an alternative lens to dominant narratives, one that challenges the colonial focus and emphasizes instead resilience, wisdom, and connection with the beyond-human. 

Artists, musicians, and poets conjure new visions, especially in non-Western latitudes, from perspectives that historically have been silenced. The tradition of connecting with the universe through art lives on. Today more than ever, it is imperative that we listen to these voices in order to discover alternatives to the future imposed upon us by capital and patriarchy. Our planet constantly shows the deleterious effects of these systems, and carrying these on into space or into the future is not only irresponsible, but absurd. We need visions that are capable of inspiring and healing our extremely problematic relationship with the other existences around us. 

It is on this black canvas of the cosmos where we must come together to write new stories that honor every stone, every drop of water, every molecule of air; stories in which we may learn to see beyond the utilitarian and the economic, recognizing the value of all forms of existence for the simple reason that they are part of this universe. That black canvas is there, inviting us to imagine.