Ancient astrological practices – ranging from horoscopic astrology and divination, to the observation and interpretation of planetary movements, and the structuring of human calendar systems according to celestial cycles – attest that human history has always been infused by the cosmic. Whether by helping us measure time, establish cyclical rhythms, develop mapping practices, or by leading us to more fundamental questions about our place in the cosmos when faced by its infinite vastness, outer space has always been inextricably intertwined with humanity’s earthly existence.
Particularly since the mid-20th century, collective imaginaries of outer space have been shaped by highly mediated major historical events, especially during the Cold War-era Space Race. The Soviet launch of Sputnik I (the first artificial satellite launched to orbit the Earth) in 1957 was a major technological and media event that simultaneously showed off Soviet technological advancement and led US President John F. Kennedy to declare a “war of perception:” an intensified effort to project American ideals during the Cold War. In 1969, the Apollo 11 moon landing was a highly choreographed and televised event broadcast globally by NASA and CBS in partnership with not only advertisers but also military contractors. Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s statement “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind,” as he took his first step on the moon’s surface, continues to resonate across the global cultural imaginary to this day. Furthermore, the widely circulated 1972 Blue Marble photograph taken by the Apollo 17 crew provided for the first time a view of a unified, fragile Earth that inspired James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’ Gaia Theory.
In view of major political, societal, and technological events unfolding around them, contemporary artists, filmmakers, and writers of the time claimed outer space both as a site of creative speculation with regard to humanity’s technological future, as well as a site of societal and environmental critique. Famous sci-fi films that have by now achieved cult classic status, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Alien series, examine themes of sentient artificial intelligence and encounters with alien life forms. Additionally, science fiction literature– particularly works produced by Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin, both considered deeply feminist and widely engaged with in contemporary artistic and cultural theory and practice–employed space to probe existential themes such as human adaptation in new environments, liberation from oppressive overarching structures, identity, and gender.
Closer to our time, space has re-emerged as a site of political, cultural, and economic struggle, especially as it is recast as a zone for corporate extraction, and fantasies of space tourism and colonisation by companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic run by the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. For instance, the Blue Origin-run NS-31 spaceflight earlier this year, which took singer Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King, Bezos’s (then) fiancée Lauren Sánchez, bioastronautics researcher Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn to outer space for just over ten minutes, was criticised by many as an extremely costly and resource-intensive recreational activity that highlights ever-increasing economic disparity between the ultra-wealthy and the rest. In this scenario, Cold War-era narratives of progress and conquest return outfitted in a new pseudo-liberal techno-utopian Silicon Valley aesthetic. As a critical counter-narrative, art and design collective Nonhuman Nonsense has proposed independent personhood for the planet Mars by creating Planetary Personhood: “an interplanetary campaign pursuing radical space decolonisation.” 1Nonhuman Nonsense, “Planetary Personhood,” accessed October 26, 2025, https://planetarypersonhood.com/.This speculative approach to space takes non-life, e.g. stones and rocks, as the original inhabitants of this planet: creating the possibility of discussion for the ethics of inhabiting another planet. Taking a scientific and practical perspective, the publication Art in Orbit by design theorist Barbara Brownie discusses space as an alternative to the limitations of terrestrial art and design and the reciprocal influence on the emerging commercial spaceflight.2Barbara Brownie (eds.), Art in Orbit: Art Objects and Spaceflight (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2025).Space allows for alternative design strategies that are unbound by earthly limitations, such as gravity, weight, balance, and orientation.
In contemporary artistic practices, critical engagement with outer space persists, especially through the figure of the alien and the accompanying notion of alienation, and through critical contemporary interpretations of space as a realm where social justice and equality, particularly within the framework of the Anthropocene, might still be possible.3Marie-Pier Boucher, Claire Webb, Annick Bureaud, and Nahum (eds.), Space Feminisms: People, Planets, Power (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2024).A long-ongoing distinct thread of post- and decolonial thinking in relation to outer space continues to produce alternative notions of the future in which (colonial) pasts are re-articulated as a minoritarian or non-Western cosmic critique of the present. These various sub-genres are often grouped under the umbrella term “counterfuturisms” and have manifested as Afrofuturism, Quantum Futurism, Gulf Futurism, Arab Futurism, Sinofuturism, Eastern Futurism, Queer Futurism, and Indigenous Futurism, among others.
Larissa Sansour’s A Space Exodus is a science-fictional short film in which a female astronaut, played by Sansour herself, lands on the moon and plants the Palestinian flag on its surface, rather than the American one. The astronaut fails to return to Earth and floats into oblivion as she utters: “Jerusalem, we have a problem…” In doing so, Sansour subverts well-known (sci-fi) references into an anti-colonial framework that reimagines the moon landing as a Palestinian achievement. The film “hijack[s] the Cold War colonial theme of space travel within [the] contemporary geopolitical context of the Near East.”4Jussi Parikka, “Middle East and Other Futurisms: Imaginary Temporalities in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture,” Culture, Theory and Critique 59, no. 1 (2018): 50.Science fiction is employed here to think beyond existing power structures: the colonised Palestine is cast as the coloniser of the moon. In the context of Palestine, employing the tactics of counter-futurist genres is also concerned with re-articulating a past, history, or narrative, from which it has been consistently erased. Similarly, the reversal of gender roles (both science fiction and space travel are male-dominated fields) alludes to the postcolonial turn in science fiction that is withdrawing from dominant powers towards one that “has relevance towards building new, freer, alternative worlds.”5arienne maree browne and Walidah Imarisha (eds.), Octavia’s Brood: Speculative Fiction from Social Justice Movements (AK Press, 2015), 4.
One artistic project addressing the concept of outer space between fact and fiction, and uncovers hidden histories and narratives, is MacKenzie Calle’s The Gay Space Agency, which draws attention to the exclusion of openly LGBTQI+ astronauts from the American space programme. The Gay Space Agency is a fictional institution that highlights and celebrates the history of queer astronauts.6Mackenzie Calle, “The Gay Space Agency,” accessed October 26, 2025, https://mackenziecalle.com/The-Gay-Space-Agency.Celebrating and fighting for inclusivity within (outer)space(s) has been more important than ever, for example, when at the beginning of 2025, NASA started dismantling their Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) programmes. Similarly, artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige looked into the Lebanese Rocket Society, a group of students guided by their professor that created and launched rockets for space study and academic purposes. Through their film, The Lebanese Rocket Society: The strange tale of the Lebanese Space adventure, they shed light on the absence of this almost surrealistic Lebanese space experiment from the history of space travel as well as from Lebanese collective memory.
Both history and mainstream science fiction have formed our perspective on outer space. In a time where space travel and space tourism have become increasingly viable, how do contemporary artists imagine and engage with the concept of outer space? How does outer space function as an alternative solution for terrestrial issues? For this issue, we invite contributions that critically engage with the notion of outer space as an artistic, cultural, political, speculative and philosophical notion. We are interested in how outer space – in all its facets – is addressed, debated, and imagined outside and beyond the dominant narratives and hegemonic histories of science fiction, space travel, and other space-related entities. We are curious about how outer space, including viewing ourselves from the outside in, the longing for escape and the actualisation of alternative futures on other planets, and contemporary science fiction, has produced genres, tropes, artistic strategies and other forms of critical engagement with our earthly existence. And perhaps more importantly: what stories have been untold, unimagined, or even hidden away?
We invite scholars, writers, artists, and creative or cultural practitioners to submit contributions in the form of academic articles, reviews, interviews, visual works, hybrid essays, poems, and any other form that is fitting for the theme and the A5-format journal. We encourage contributors from all stages of their (research) practice to respond to the call for papers. We look forward to receiving your submissions, together with your CV or portfolio, by no later than December 7, 2025. For academic articles and written pieces, we invite you to submit an abstract of not more than 300 words. For visual or other experimental formats, we invite you to submit a proposal that does not exceed 1 A4 page. You can send your proposed contribution to redactie@tijdschriftkunstlicht.nl using ‘PROPOSAL (OUTER) SPACE(S)’ as the subject line. All writers and contributors will be notified about the selection process before the end of the month. The issue will be published between May and June 2026.
Kunstlicht is a volunteer-run academic journal and is not able to provide an author’s honorarium. Each contributor receives two free copies of the issue. Two – five years following publication, papers will be submitted to the freely accessible online archive.