Staging the Moon

Charting the wild imaginaries of extraction-driven growth beyond our planet

Staging the Moon: Resource Extraction Beyond Earth is a publication of the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia 2023. It critically unpacks Luxembourg’s role in space-mining developments from the perspective of resources. Curators Francelle Cane and Marija Mari? transform the pavilion into a “lunar laboratory”: a space for testing human technologies on the Moon that also doubles as a media studio “staging” corporate narratives of positive change. From the development of human settlements on the Moon to the mining of asteroids for rare minerals and metals, the wild imaginaries of extraction-driven growth have, quite literally, transcended the boundaries of Earth. This generously-illustrated volume collects essays and fragments of research on the shifting of resource exploitation from the exhausted Earth to its celestial hinterland, and begins an urgent debate on the impact this shift will have on our understanding of land, resources and commons.