User:Amy Suo Wu/space race

beyond the moon and outer space

For this semester, my interest in the landing of the moon initially stemmed from the contested reality of the nature of this event. Part fiction, part fact, my intrigue lies in the mythical narrative around an apparent historical moment. However, realising that perhaps the nature of mediated images are to some degree all contestable, I steered away from this angle and onto another. Still fascinated by this event, I started to unpack the event in an attempt to find out what else was it that I was drawn to. Thus, I backed up a little and discovered that perhaps what I was interested in was the venture of 'peaceful' space exploration under the dubious guise of colonisation. The quest to expand and conquer new territory is an old narrative, a story that unfolds continually in each generation and is always underpinned by politics. One can argue that the desire to demystify the unknown, to cross the membrane unto the unfamiliar is hard-wired in our genes. Thus as a consequence, the eternal race against ourselves, forces of nature and/or 'God' is one that is evidently becoming faster-exponentially faster with the help of technological advancement. Of course we can only speculate that the ultimate goal is human transcendence, however it is one avenue that does provide the space to reflect upon the balance of our inherent needs vs desires and the compromise of progress vs maintenance.