Cosmic Terrains: The Sun-King, Son of Heaven, and Sovereign of the Seas (original) (raw)

Between the Terrestrial and the Cosmic In 1966 Stewart Brand printed buttons asking, ÒWhy havenÕt we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?Ó He thought the photo would transform politics and everyday life by sparking recognition of the feedbacks of our social and ecological systems. Once NASA released photos of ÒEarthriseÓ and the iconic ÒBlue Marble,Ó Brand put them on the cover of The Whole Earth Catalog. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBruno Latour and Dipesh ChakrabartyÕs conversation about ÒConflicts of Planetary ProportionsÓ raises a demand not far from BrandÕs. 1 In 2020 Ð as wildfires burn, demagogues fume, refugees clutch at rafts, and new viruses stalk the species Ð our vision of the earth needs revision. The planet is now shattered into an array of ÒplanetaritiesÓ: the globe of free trade, the calculable systems of earth science, the spiritual or indigenous nature beneath the pavement, a geopolitics redrawn by industrial powers outside the West, the elusive and unpredictable Gaia. 2 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊDespite billionaires fleeing to New Zealand and Mars, weÕre far too connected by oceans, weather, communications, and diseases for any of us to go it alone. We again need to see the earth as a whole. This is all the more true since the planet photographed from space failed to birth an unequivocally better world. The ÒBlue MarbleÓ photo implied that a swift and tidy unification was possible; it blurred and suppressed differences, making the work of agreement Ð of diplomacy Ð seem unnecessary. Even the Whole Earth Catalog, though based in a vision of autonomous, off-grid communes, later fed into Silicon ValleyÕs globe-spanning technocapitalism. 3 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPerhaps as a rebuke to the previous generationÕs narrowed vision, artist Aspen Mays created a new pin in 2009: ÒWhy havenÕt we seen a photograph of the whole Universe yet?Ó She was asking something impossible: no camera could snap the whole universe. To make visible and explicit all the knowledge, assumptions, hopes, and fears about the cosmos in a single image requires active imagination and semiotic condensation. It invokes history, possibility, and the not-yet-seen. It may call for a synthetic, anamorphic view from multiple perspectives at once Ð harmoniously, discordantly, or unthinkably joined. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBrand hoped that a single image of the planet could change our cosmology. Mays suggests a complimentary reply: how we live on earth is closely tied to how we address the immensely difficult task of picturing the universe. If we want to come back Òdown to earth,Ó we need to think these two scales together Ð the cosmic and the terrestrial Ð and e-flux journal #114 Ñ december 2020 Ê John Tresch Cosmic Terrains (of the Sun King, Son of Heaven, and Sovereign of the Seas)