The Art Corner: when did we lose our cosmic personality?
This month, we talk to Mexican artist Manuel Díaz about space, death, and rituals on Mars.
This story started with a mistake. Every journalist knows the sheer pain you feel when an interview you thought you recorded turns out not to be. Be it Mercury Retrograde or bad luck, I decided to take it as an opportunity. I found myself challenged to weave a narrative purely from my memory and feelings.
Manuel Díaz is a shamanic healer and artist, his work has been exhibited all around the world, and he collaborates with the Kosmica Institute, a global institute to help bridge the gap between art, culture, and space narratives.
With his help, I was able to reweave the narratives of our conversation. Space, death, and indigenous knowledge. How does space give mankind the opportunity to explore without invading? How can space be a mirror for humans? What does a funeral on Mars look like?
Death is a reminder that we are not permanent, that we are not invincible. Death is extremely humbling. If we detach from the fear of life ending, we can understand the potential that death holds for us during life. So, as billionaires think of ways to make life on the red planet permanent, Díaz reflects on impermanence on Mars.
To imagine a place we would like to inhabitwith a non-extractive mind, we think about its customs: How is time perceived there? Hw would a death ritual be performed there? First, a year on Mars is 1.9 Earth years, the time it takes the planet to do one revolution around the sun. Second, it is very difficult to light a candle on Mars, and bodies don’t decompose. A funeral on Mars would look nothing like the rites we witness on Earth.
Death is a reminder that we are not permanent, that we are not invincible. Death is extremely humbling.
“I am a cosmic being”, Díaz began, his tone of voice calm and soothing. The pauses between his sentences reveal a presence seldom seen in people that are speaking about their life and work. I understood his phrase to mean that he is part of a bigger something, humbling. Thinking of ourselves as part of something bigger helps relativise our experience and, in a way, put less weight on controlling our life path.
He told me he has a special interest in the contemplation of phenomena that are still beyond human control — clouds, storms, volcanic activity, astronomical conjunctions and lunar phases-, to construct images that re-signify our presence on Earth, and therefore, in the Universe. He uses his shamanic knowledge, learned from local guides in Mexico, to steer his work.
For months now, I have been exploring the poetic reminders that nature gives us to help us understand the world in a different way. It is no mystery that narratives of extraction, colonialism and invasion are at the root of the destruction of our planet. There is a real need to counter these in a way that feels both tender and relevant.
The bridge between the poetic and the political is a place we must explore because it weighs on how cultures and minds change. Activists and writers have been looking into this space for a long time, and so have ancient indigenous traditions. It is a space that works on changing the paradigms that are in place from an emotional level. This is necessary in a world that privileges the logical.
“For me, the poetic is a gesture of the spirit. And for the spirit to express, freedom is necessary.” Díaz argues that how we position ourselves in front of the world is a political act, how we live our lives, what we choose to do and say. His artwork does just this.
The video project Beyond The Deep Blue Sky, showing the launch of the Space X Dragon 2 rocket, is enigmatic in this sense. The rocket was launched on 30th May 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic that saw people struggling to survive economically, and five days after the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police. At the same time, a clueless President Trump used the space race as a new way of masking his fallacies. This was the first NASA commercial crew program, sponsored by Space X. Just a week later, the company launched a satellite of the US military into space. “It was necessary for me to make a critique in the context in which this was all happening,” says Díaz.
The video begins with a series of reflective questions:
Who advanced the clock of death?
When did we lose our cosmic personality?
Then, as the countdown for launch begins, images of climate disaster, slavery, George Floyd being asphyxiated by police, fill the screen in intervals. Then, the rocket launches: “America has launched, Go Space X, Go NASA. So rises a new era of American Space flight”.
Space has been an instrument for governments to show power for many years. Today it has also become a way for billionaires to show power. Conquering what is outside of planet Earth has become the ultimate capitalist achievement. It perpetuates the narrative that space for exploitation rather than expansion.
Elon Musk said ¨Going to Mars looks like that Shackleton ad going to Antarctica. It’s dangerous, it’s uncomfortable, it’s a long trip, you might not come back alive. (…) Yes, an arduous and dangerous journey in which you might die. If that sounds appealing to you, Mars is the place.” This reminds me of a war recruiter’s language, a language that perpetuates toxic masculinity. The work of artists like Díaz is fundamental to counteract these actions.
“For me, the poetic is a gesture of the spirit. And for the spirit to express, freedom is necessary.”
“It is a poetic and political action,” says Díaz about his art, but also other artists that explore social justice issues in their work. If to connect with the spiritual is to connect with freedom, and detach from our action-oriented control-freak mind, then it truly is a relevant and revolutionary act. It is positioning oneself in front of the world.
“Another example of this connection is the project Impermanence on Mars,” he says. “In this project, which is about death and the rituality of death on Mars, I have merged the perspectives that I occupy as an artist. The poetic, developing and presenting around the topic of imaginary futures, and critique, the political side of my art.” Manuel tells me the project was born by observing the narratives around the search for permanence in Mars as a possible second house.
“These plans have a very colonial perspective still,” says Díaz. “They speak of going to Mars, staying there, finding ways to live there, colonizing and exploiting the resources of Mars. It tells a narrative of exploitation. I see this and ask a simple question: when are we going to speak about death? Opening the discussion about death outside our planet allows us to rethink how this existential condition can be re-symbolized.
“My argument is to explore death as a condition for human beings on Mars. When are we going to speak of rites? When are we going to speak of spirituality on other planets? I think that when you touch on these themes it is a way to develop in a spiritual, emotional and mental way. So that we can arrive on other planets in a way that is more conscious, with a perspective more diverse, more representative for the better good of humanity and everything that exists in the universe.” Díaz takes a big breath, a remembrance of his existence.
The other day this picture of the first space hotel fluctuated on the internet, to be opened in 2027. My first thought was: What about trees?
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Thank you for reading this month’s Art Corner! You can follow the work of Manuel Díaz on his Website or Instagram
