The Mothership: Multiplanetary Becomings and Reproducing Worlds

Abstract

On November 16th, 2022, NASA launched Artemis I, the first of multiple missions propelling humanity toward a multiplanetary future in which we will build new worlds, terraforming environments both physically and ideologically. These “moon to mars” missions mark a new era of deep space exploration, the first in fifty years since the Apollo missions in the 1970s. This time, NewSpace venture capitalists are playing a prominent role, particularly since the Obama administration quietly shifted funding toward private corporations in 2011 (Valentine). Space, as a critical territory, simultaneously presents us with an opportunity to consider our future celestial societies, as well as our terrestrial existence here on earth (Boucher). This moment in history encapsulates the hopes and dreams of the “Artemis Generation” and requires ethico-political discourse to avoid “terraforming as enforced terranormativity” (Oman-Reagan), or approaching space settlement with normative or colonial systems of knowledge. Utilizing an interdisciplinary research-creation approach, I engage in speculation as practice, putting science fiction texts and methods in conversation with critical theory. This project centres four space feminist “missions” or chapters that include a cultural geography of NASA’s current Artemis program, the history of women in the space agency, and the political, ethical, and technological entanglements of putting bodies in space. I also explore what I refer to as the “Space M/other” film genre and the social and ethical implications of reproducing in space. Finally, I consider the power of science fiction as a medium that attends to the ineffable in social discourse and contextualize my own audio-based research-creation experiment—a “speculative soundscape essay.” This project is an attempt to triangulate themes of space exploration, motherhood, and science fiction in order to consider a mode of cosmic futurity that is more gestative, symbiotic, and germinal.