{"id":9984,"date":"2024-03-08T06:35:49","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T06:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=9984"},"modified":"2024-03-08T06:35:49","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T06:35:49","slug":"new-doc-explores-the-pitfalls-of-colonizing-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=9984","title":{"rendered":"New Doc Explores the Pitfalls of Colonizing Space"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The experiment was<\/span> failing. Nelly Ben Hayoun-St\u00e9panian was in a cave in Spain, one outfitted to resemble the surface of a foreign planet, and she knew it was time to pull out. The goal had been to test how three people\u2014 Ben Hayoun-St\u00e9panian and two of her doppelg\u00e4ngers\u2014would form a new society in space using their perspectives as people whose lives have been touched by colonization here on Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy doppelg\u00e4ngers only stayed with me two nights, then they left because we had to abort the mission,\u201d says Ben Hayoun-St\u00e9panian. \u201cThere was a whole drama situation happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you want to know exactly what the drama was, you\u2019ll have to watch Ben Hayoun-St\u00e9panian\u2019s new documentary, Doppelg\u00e4ngers\u00b3<\/em>, which premieres this weekend at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Suffice to say, even if the experiment didn\u2019t go as planned, it still proved her point: Humanity\u2019s quest to explore space needs input from people who aren\u2019t millionaires or leaders of government space agencies.<\/p>\n

When she\u2019s not making films, Ben Hayoun-St\u00e9panian is an artist and the SETI Institute\u2019s \u201cdesigner of experiences.\u201d One of her goals is to bring \u201cqueer ecofeminist perspectives\u201d to space travel, and with Doppelg\u00e4ngers\u00b3<\/em> she wanted to show folks like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos\u2014the ones seeking to commercialize space travel<\/a>\u2014what it means to colonize the cosmos.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a call for action, a call for members of the public to take ownership of these futures,\u201d Ben Hayoun-St\u00e9panian says of the film, \u201cbecause if you\u2019re not, other people are going to do it for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Hayoun-St\u00e9panian\u2019s method for bringing in these voices is twofold. For one, she spends a good chunk of the documentary talking to experts\u2014planetary scientist Christopher McKay, physicist Michio Kaku, among others\u2014about trauma, space exploration, and parallel selves. For the other, she relies on her doppelg\u00e4ngers: Lucia Kagramanyan and Myriam Amroun, two people who share Ben Hayoun-St\u00e9panian\u2019s background but not her lived experiences.<\/p>\n

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