The Public Art Program: For a Shared (Outer)Space
2023-Ongoing
Community-based initiative at El Campo Pesquero de Playa Bagdad, Tamaulipas, MX. Inflatable planetarium and 180-degree projection. The Playa Bagdad / SpaceX conundrum represents a case of social and environmental injustice that demands recognition and attention through transdisciplinary strategies that think, sense, and do collectively to act affectively. Conceived as a communal act of resistance, the Public Art Program: For a Shared (Outer) Space responds to this urgency by using an inflatable planetarium as an educational and political arena to foster critical conversations about the anxieties and desires that emerge from sharing land with SpaceX’s launch port in Boca Chica, Texas, US.

This initiative emphasizes the pressing need to understand and frame outer space and the Mexico-US borderlands within the concepts of collectivity and cross-border commons. From this perspective, the Public Art Program: For a Shared (Outer) Space engages with the community of Playa Bagdad as a site from which to craft aesthetic assemblages capable of exposing the colonial practices of erasure embedded in SpaceX’s presence in the eastern corner of the Mexico-US borderlands.

After two years and four successful editions, the Public Art Program: For a Shared (Outer) Space will enter a new stage in 2025 with the support of the Educational and Public Program grant awarded by Museo Jumex.