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Part III. Documentation
Chapter 10. Planet B
Installation The assumption of Elon Musk that by 2050 one million people will live on Mars triggered me to imagine the kind of future he is trying to create. This is how Planet B was born at the end of 2019. Planet B is the project questioning the ethics of space exploration and design under capitalism. Its goal is to find and expose old colonial patterns that still exist both in visual communication and in the exploration of space. This project aims to contribute to the Decolonizing Design Movement by projecting outdated design standards to the pessimistically painted design-fictional future. The name “Planet B” is a wordplay referring to Mars being proposed as a replacement for Earth, in other words, our plan B. The final form of it is an installation with a diverse range of digital and analog graphic elements. At the center of the installation designed with the help of design fiction lies a diegetic prototype, a design artifact of its time: the brand of the corporation colonizing Mars. The brand is represented through digital and printed appearances and is surrounded by the narrative of other objects. The setting of the installation plays an important role in the narrative as well. The time this scene takes place in October 2050, exactly 30 years from the publishing of this thesis. Its supposed location is in the USA. And it is not accidental. SpaceX is the first example of how, during Obama’s administration, space became a place for the successful collaboration of the govern-
