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An Earth focused space program featuring interactive installations, events, and community artivism that promotes a new relationship with Earth in lieu of space travel

© The Lamu Space Station

On the 22nd of January 2022, a different kind of space mission was launched in Kenya. A group of Kenyan artists and non-profit organisations, in conjunction with Earth Force Climate Command, a futurist arts initiative, have created The Lamu Space Station on the island of Lamu, sixty miles south of the Somali border. An interactive initiative rooted in community arts activism and engagement, the Lamu Space Station is the second iteration of many Space Stations that will evolve in various international locations with diverse teams, different issues, materials, and themes based on each locale.

© The Lamu Space Station

The series of earthbound space programs are part of Earth Force Climate Command’s larger mission to imagine new, more sustainable stories about the future. The basic principles of Earth Force Climate Command are:

  1. Stay on Earth.
  2. Enjoy it.
  3. Stop thinking we can torch this planet and then escape to another one.

We’re challenging people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to come back to Earth and really focus on trying to make life exciting and sustainable here

“The destruction of the environment is an enormous danger – a lack of adequate imagery about the future is a danger of the same magnitude,” artist and Lamunaut Abdul Rop explained, “the Space Station is important because it will enable us to create a new story that addresses our ravaged landscapes and careless material culture.”

Earth Force Climate Command’s project director and conceptual artist Ajax Axe is collaborating withKenyan artists M.T. Shariff, Lincoln Mwangi, Abdul Rop, Anna Mokeira, Onesmus Mangi, Shizemonize, and Patrick Mwangi to create the installations for The Lamu Space Station. On the 26th of February, the second exhibition with artists from Lamu, art students from Anidan Orphanage imagining Lamu in the year 2799 with a dance performance from the Ubunifu Arts Initiative.

© The Lamu Space Station
© The Lamu Space Station

Though the project was conceived before last summer’s billionaire space race heated up, the artists plan to invite Jeff Bezos to “come back to earth” and spend time at The Lamu Space Station. Elon Musk and Richard Branson are invited to join as well.

“We’re challenging people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to come back to Earth and really focus on trying to make life exciting and sustainable here,” Axe said during an artist talk last month. “This space fantasy is delusional at best and downright deadly for the hopes of humankind. Artists and activists are the best people on this planet to envision new myths and ideas about the next thousand years in a sustainable and sexy way.”     View this post on Instagram           

For more information, please visit The Lamu Space Station.

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