Cosmographies

In Cosmographies I continue a long-term interest in blending the language of speculative fiction with observational and poetic documentary. This impetus started with its prequel Nightfall on Gaia (2015), which was set in Antarctica and was also a collaboration with Australian-Māori performance artist Victoria Hunt who portrays the character of astrobiologist Xuê Noon in both films. Cosmographies draws from feminist speculative fiction and Indigenous futurisms, to depict the relational conditions of life in the Atacama Desert and on Mars while simultaneously using the same device of a fictional character in the future (that of Māori astrobiologist Xuê Noon) as an approach to invite audiences to recognise intangible and yet-to-be worlds that are nevertheless always immanent to the present and ingrained with the past. The idea for a sequel and the collaboration with Māori artist Victoria Hunt emerged from a dream I had in 2021 with her, as I was developing a research project and a book about diverse imaginaries of outer space that are critical of the current second space age and this new ‘space race’ that have noisily kicked off, shouldering brusquely on against unrelenting social and political unrest triggered by ongoing forms of racism and colonialism, growing inequalities, and a life-threatening acceleration of climate breakdown recorded across the entire planet. I also continue with long term collaborations with Indigenous and local communities who are engaging in life-and-death struggles for land and water justice. In the Atacama Desert in northern Chile (where I have worked since the 1990’s), Indigenous communities and allied scientists are creating novel stories of hope amid despair, enclosure, and encroachment - by lithium mining and extractivist industries, astronomy observatories, and relentless tourism. This was one of the motivations behind the making of this film. The ideation, development and production process of the film are oriented by Indigenous Storywork principles: Respect. Responsibility. Reverence. Reciprocity. Holism. Interrelatedness. Synergy. Filming of both the documentary interviews and the fabulated story have been organised around choreographing situations of induced spontaneity. In Cosmographies, a title which envisions a ‘writing’ or ‘drawing’ of the cosmos, I wished to imagine outer space beyond a narrow set of market values in which space is a resource frontier to fully shift away from understandings of space as a place to be ‘conquered’, as a quest for finding other planets to ‘settle’, as a ‘hunt’ for life in the universe. Earth is also the cosmos. Earth’s predicaments are also cosmic problems. We all live and die as part of the cosmos as we are all cosmic stardust. In the hope this film might be a call to action to support land and water defenders in the Atacama desert, the expectation is also for the film to intervene in the current debates about outer space, to bring to the fore the urgency of questioning how the hegemonic formations of outer space might be broken apart and be given new meanings and political directions by re-storying and counter-imagining how humans might end up dwelling in the expanse of the cosmos. Or not.