In the era of the New Space, Cosmopolitics argues that the cosmos is a common good belonging equally to all terrestrial entities. Treated as an infinite resource by private and governmental agents eager to exploit it, its actual finiteness calls for a collective stewardship, a democracy beyond national and anthropological boundaries.
From its beginnings, space conquest has been exporting earthly conflicts and unjust hierarchies to the stars in the name of progress. As the Chinese program Chang’e seeks to reveal the origins of the Moon and of the Solar System, it is clear that the research about Earth’s satellite is the first step of a larger cosmic extractivist enterprise. Along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX program to colonize Mars and “make civilisation multiplanetary” - an unrealistic utopia turned into a propaganda tool for right-wing ideas - the astrocapitalist agenda reveals itself as an intrinsically fascist project.
Between astrological satellites, xenoliths and thinking planets, Cosmopolitics turns the mundane location of Kunstbrücke am Wildenbruch into a speculative spaceship. The artworks presented in the show nourish new political imaginaries in order to reinvent our relationship to the cosmos and realize our planetary condition.
Curatorial assistance: Clara von Schwerin
