Bethany Rigby: Mining The Skies

The youngest invited participant at the Venice Architecture Biennale presents a new work reflecting on the future of extraterrestrial resources. Bethany Rigby’s Mining the Skies, situated in the Central Pavillion at the Giardini, takes a critical look at the growing interest in asteroid mining: the declaration and quantification of other astral bodies as extractable, long before any contact with them is made. As the finitude of Earth’s minerals becomes more pressing, planetary geologists look to the skies to drive speculation on an increasingly diminishing future.

When contemplating humankind as a multi-planetary species, resource extraction is high on the list of problems that need solving. Mining the Skies is an exploration into current research on extra terrestrial resource extraction. 

The installation is comprised of three amorphous mirrored panels and an arrangement of geological specimens. Each geological specimen relates to current research into extraterrestrial mining, with artefacts including geological simulants and analogues from the European Space Agency, metallic meteorites, and specimens from the personal collections of asteroid mining entrepreneurs and planetary geologists. Etched onto the mirrored panels underlying the specimens are morse-code extracts of the Outer Space Treaty, Moon Agreement and US Space Act that relate to the ownership of extraterrestrial resources. Altogether, the arrangement forms a map of the local celestial sites allocated for extraterrestrial mining.

The room offers a dark, quiet place of reflection on humankind’s use of geological matter for its own advancement, and a contemplation on the future commodification of outer space.

Bethany Rigby (b. 1995) is a designer and writer based in London, whose practice investigates emerging technologies and ancient histories relevant to the ground beneath us and space above us. As well as this work at the 17th International Venice Architecture Biennale, she has also contributed to the Studio Other Spaces’ (founded by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann) collective exhibition, Future Assembly, also at Venice Architecture Biennale. She has written for Migrant Journal, Ernest Journal and feeeels magazine, alongside her personal essays and newsletter. She has undertaken residencies with the Land Art Agency on the sustainability of outer space, and An L’Anntair on remote landscapes, the sea and St Kilda.

Under the theme “How Will We Live Together?,” the 17th International Venice Architecture Biennale includes 112 participants from 46 countries, with a growing delegation from Africa, Latin America and Asia and with a wide female representation. The exhibition is organised into five scales; three are exhibited in the Arsenale and two in the Central Pavilion: “Among Diverse Beings,” “As New Households,” “As Emerging Communities,” “Across Borders,” “As One Planet.” In the context of widening political divides and growing economic inequalities, it calls on architects to imagine spaces in which we can generously live together. 

“We need a new spatial contract,” stated Hashim Sarkis, curator of the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. “In the context of widening political divides and growing economic inequalities, it calls on architects to imagine spaces in which we can generously live together. The participants in the Biennale are collaborating with other professions and constituencies—artists, builders, engineers, and craftspeople, but also politicians, journalists, social scientists, and everyday citizens. In effect, the 2021 Architecture Biennale asserts the vital role of the architect as both cordial convener and custodian of the spatial contract. In parallel, this exhibition also maintains that it is in its material, spatial, and cultural specificity that architecture inspires the ways we live together. In that respect, we ask the participants to highlight those aspects of the main theme that are uniquely architectural.”

Exhibition installation and production assistance from Joseph Thompson. 
Text editing by Jacob Bolton.
For any enquiries, please email bethanylararigby@gmail.com.