(Post-)Planetary Design

Event: Post Planetary Capital Symposium

Interested in the economic realities of the privately funded Rebel Army doing battle against the Empire? Concerned with the social implications of privatized space travel in lieu of a national or global space program? Does the environmental impact of a multi-trillion dollar off-world mining industry keep you up at night? Then consider spending March 24th with us at the Post Planetary Capital Symposium at The Center for Transformative Media at Parsons The New School for Design.

As the dull glow of nationalism and cold war politics has faded from governmental space programs it is little surprise that space exploration has undergone widespread privatization.

Yet it is only recently that potentially massive profitability has accelerated off-planet projects, replacing narrower and perhaps unrealistic dreams of space tourism with asteroid mining (purportedly a multi-trillion dollar industry) and long term Mars colonization. Such projects present an odd combination of new technologies (especially advanced robotics) and lower cost older technologies (rocket propulsion) deployed in unfamiliar and lawless territory.

While much has been said regarding the internal limits of capital, much yet remains to be said about how capitalist imperatives can be taken off-world, questioning whether capital[ism] has external limits as it begins to spread across the solar system and out into space. Is the fact that asteroid mining extends an old logic of environmental degradation rendered moot by its non-terrestrial location? Does off-world colonization by non-governmental entities lay troubling ground work for the advent of mega-corporations and unregulatable capitalism?

Furthermore, the complicity between capitalist expansion and space exploration which centers upon large-scale collective action potentially questions stock oppositions between capital and ecological betterment, technological progression and radical politics, as well as space travel and non-national collectivity. This one day symposium aims to address the potential strategies and claims surrounding these issues.

– Ben Woodard, Ed Keller

Speakers include Kai Bosworth (UMN), Ben Bratton (UCSD), Ed Keller (CTM/Parsons), Carla Leitao (RPI/Pratt), Geoff Manaugh (Gizmodo/BLDGBLOG), Rory Rowan (Wageningen University, The Netherlands), Keith Tilford (New School), Ken Wark (New School), Ben Woodard (University of Western Ontario), Kazys Varnelis (Columbia Univ. GSAPP), and more TBA.

For up to date information or to register for the event click HERE.

Categories: Events

Tags: Architecture, Design Theory, Economics, Events, Parsons, Politics

And so it begins… Archi-fi: Design looking forward