We live in a time that offers seemingly boundless opportunities for travel and connection, yet paradoxically, we are more lonely and divided than ever. Dating apps conjure romance within a chosen radius; GPS offers pathways to dreamy holiday destinations; while generative AI interprets unfamiliar sounds into digestible multilingual summaries. Marks of time and space have bent to market desires; outer space travel has become the next horizon for conspicuous consumption; while we keep investing in the illusory capacity to commercialise all forms of human experience.
In a context of global climate crisis and widening economic disparity, the eco-social cost of global mobility is impossible to ignore. The occupation of placescolonised lands and global movement of bodiesdisplaced peoples through conflicts and environmental disasters, sits in stark contrast to the techno-utopian reveries of oligarchs. For many, the everyday experience of a technologically-mediated community increasingly complicates and confuses perceptionsa sense of belonging to one, or any, place on this earth. At the same time, contemporary technologies may offer vital networks of support and distributed spaces for deep connection that should not be underestimated.
How do we find community and connection, in an ever expanding and complex spatial imaginary? What are the images, ideas and questions that shape our multilayered sense of belonging today?
See you there is a publishing project that facilitates contemporary conversations about space, place, community and mobility. Through a series of linked interventions, it showcases the work of a selected group of international practitioners to provoke reflection about how and where we might find our communities (and at what cost).
For Ursula K. Le Guin, stories serve as ‘carrier bags’ to gather and share knowledge. They are woven through complex fibres of word and image, and form a fundamental technology for human survival. For the editors of See You There, the ‘travel bag’ offers a way to re-imagine knowledge exchange, connection and creation. It reflects an incomplete process that holds images and ideas, which are transported between people and places.
On April 11th 2024, a group of artists, theorists, designers and curators met at the Centre Wallonie Bruxelles (CWB). Some travelled across countries, continents and hemispheres, while others arrived on foot. In the CWB theatre, they shared stories and unravelled urgent questions about living across new frontiers of space, community, ecology and technology. How do we situate ourselves in today’s complex and ever expanding, technologically mediated space? How do we find one another (whoever we are), once we are there?
‘Travel Bags: 9 Pockets for Celestial Bodies/Terrestrial Beings’, responds to the tradition of publishing conference proceedings, offering a generous carrier bag for the concepts, images and questions gathered through the bilingual (English and French spoken) colloquium ‘Celestial Bodies/Terrestrial Beings.’ Published as a series of postcards and an online syllabus, it is the first experiment by See you there, which seeks to consider how knowledge weaves diverse paths across the globe.
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Pocket 2: Horror vacui
Où sont-iels tou·te·s passé·e·s ?
Where did everyone go?
## Vidya-Kelie Juganaikloo, Missed Call (2020). Copyright and courtesy of the artist.
Vous dormez?
““Explorez hors de notre berceau terrestre, dont Tsiolkovski disait qu’une humanité adulte souhaiterait forcément le quitter” (Manuela de Barros)
Breathe deeply.
“The only known biosphere is our own, that of planet Earth…Perhaps we are, indeed, all alone.” (Denise Thwaites)
## Golnaz Behrouznia, Dissimilarium 0.2 (2019), Une vue de l’installation, Photographie : Lucie Beaulaton, VIDEOFORMES. Copyright and courtesy of the artist.
In the silence of space, the earthrise looms.
“your past unfolds in an anarchic fashion, full, yet riddled with holes.” (Amélie Bouvier Amelie Bouvier, 8 Minutes Ago, 2019. )
Pei-Ying Lin, Dimitris Stamatis, Jasmina Weiss Špela Petrič (Plant Sex Consultancy), Mutation ritual for Curcuma (2014). Copyright and courtesy of the artists.
Planet Earth is pure potential, circling a giant star.
Manuela de Barros, Cycle de conférences “Sciences & Fictions”, Université Paris 8, d’octobre 2017 à mars 2023. Retransmis et en partie archivé par la radio P-node.
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Pocket 4: Eternal eclipse
Which story will we tell?
Quelle histoire allons-nous raconter ?
The day starts anew
“#SUN - now - A girl from the front sitting on a gigantic orange bench. #SUN - now- A glowing sun disappearing beyond the horizon, sea and a sailing boat in shadow. #SUN - now - Lake with clear sky.” (Vidya-Kelie Juganaikloo)
Ouroboros drawing from a late medieval Byzantine Greek alchemical manuscript (1478), public domain accessed Wikimedia Commons
The moon orbits all day, hiding in the sunshine, offering
“une tentative de réconciliation entre l’Ailleurs et l’Ici, d’embrasser les deux ensembles, avec des corps et des êtres multiples.” (Annick Bureaud Annick Bureaud, Quelle Planète (2025). )
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Pocket 6: Alien wayfinding
Quelles traces laisseras-tu derrière toi ?
What traces will you leave behind?
Le chemin du sol au ciel, ou du ciel au sol, est bien parcouru.
“l‘atome est exactement l’idée-matière qui, des sciences à l’art, nous relie, êtres infiniment terrestres, au Cosmos.” (Manuela de Barros Manuela de Barros, Magie et Technologie (2023), MOOC DIGITAL Paris. )
Vidya-Kelie Juganaikloo, #SUNPATH 3pm, Installation, Grand Rayon de soleil, (2023). Copyright and courtesy of the artist.
Comment rentrer au domaine céleste, en se rappelant de nos origines de poussière d’étoiles?
“It is not by chance to look for UFOs. It’s the desire to see further, to look in the sky for answers to the most profound human questions… To think that up there somewhere things are moving, coming towards us.” (Louise Charlier Louise Charlier, Rocosmic Speculative Space Agency (2022 - ongoing). )
Weaver, John E., The ecological relations of roots, (1919). Creative Commons license Share Alike 3.0
Peut-être que les étoiles nous retrouveront ici.
Reading material
Monsoon Assemblages, (2016-2021), ERC project led by Professor Lindsay Bremner.
Zero is the largest number, holding potential for all that is unknown. Draw your own zero.
Zéro est le plus grand des nombres, porteur de tout ce qui est inconnu. Dessine ton propre zéro.
Our calculations failed.
“Not only is life as we know it a tiny share of the universe, but it is also close to unthinkable that it exists.” (Ania Molenda)
U.S. Army, Ester Gertston and Gloria Gordon Bolotsky reprogramming ENIAC (1946), Public domain from the archives of the ARL Technical Library
Nous cherchons “l’accès à un univers énigmatique, dont on ne possède pas toutes les clés” (Golnaz Behrouznia Golnaz Behrouznia, Dramaturgy of Biospheric Cycles (2024). )
Golnaz Behrouznia, Dramaturgy of Biospheric Cycles (2024), Dessin technique mixte. Copyright and courtesy of the artist.
Tongue-tied, we turn to one another
“I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.” (Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula K Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986). )
Louise Charlier (Roscosmic Spatial Agency) Louise Charlier, Rocosmic Speculative Space Agency (2022 - ongoing). , etching from The Book of Miracles 1957 to the present day, (2022). Copyright and courtesy of the artist.
Spikes in the price of gold and petrol, prime the demand for lunar extraction.
Can we stop making the same mistakes, over and over again?
Que peut-on glaner dans les ruines post-numériques ?
Close your eyes.
“Perhaps all that is left of the world is a wasteland covered with rubbish heaps, and the hanging garden of the Great Khan’s palace. perceptionsIt is our eyelids that separate them…” (Italo Calvino)
## Elise Morin, Mapping the Red Forest from Spring Odyssey (2020). Copyright and courtesy of the artist.
Le soleil caresse ton visage, tandis que les ours polaires s’accrochent aux calottes de glace.
Angels in America, ‘Belize describes Heaven’, extract from HBO miniseries directed by Mike Nichols, 2003, adapted from the play ‘Angels in America’ by Tony Kushner, 1991.
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