Space Acts
Not in some distant future, but ten years ago, the US passed a law that explicitly allowed private companies to exploit resources on other celestial bodies commercially. This so-called ‘Space Act of 2015’ effectively translated the popular science fiction trope of space mining into legal reality, preparing future interplanetary extraction schemes.
In his exercise of Un·Earthing, Ralo Mayer invites participants on a cosmic journey across the natural and cultural history of meteorites: rocks that are older than our solar system and yet deeply entangled with life on Earth and human cultures. Space Acts looks into existing meteorite cultures on Earth and asks how human interaction with rocks from outer space can help us to reimagine possible futures beyond colonial exploitation of resources, on and off our planet.
is an artist, filmmaker and meteorite licker based in Vienna. Informed by the multivalent notion of plot and a practice of performative research, he examines objects and places from space exploration, science fiction, or everyday life, and translates his research into artistic storytelling across media. As part of his postdoc project on Plots of Un·Earthing, Mayer currently investigates meteorite cultures and how past and present human interaction with non-terrestrial material might relate to possible future interplanetary extraction schemes.
In English