Exhibitions, Research, Criticism, Commentary

A chronology of 3,585 references across art, science, technology, and culture
● 02/11/2025

Francesca Bria and XOF Research launch The Authoritarian Stack, an interactive data visualization tracking Silicon Valley’s ascendant “patriotic tech” coalition. Drawing on an open-source dataset of 250+ actors (Alexander Karp, Palmer Luckey, Peter Thiel, etc.) and $45 billion in financial flows, the research traces how cloud platforms, AI, and defense tech, are converging into privatized infrastructure around core state functions—a system where “corporate boards, not public law, set the rules.”

The Authoritarian Stack
● 03/09/2025

Simon Denny revives Italian Futurism’s aeropainting to explore contemporary defence industry aesthetics for “The Future” at Michael Lett, Auckland (NZ). Training AI image models on Futurist paintings, Denny presents grainy abstractions of flight, iconography, and machines peppered with snippets of Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX marketing copy. Linking technofascist moments across a century, he explores how the “futurist dream of machinic speed, aerial traversal, and war are being revived.”

Michael Lett
● 12/04/2025
“When I was a kid, it was low-Earth orbit. Now, the frontier is out near the asteroid belt, and the moon and Mars are becoming part of where humanity just hangs out, maybe not yet as people, but with robots.”
– Space Report author Jonathan McDowell, describing how space exploration gradually expands in scope. “Meanwhile, low-Earth orbit is so normalized that it doesn’t take a space agency to deal with it. You just call SpaceX,” he adds.
New York Times
● 22/02/2025

“The piece doesn’t work anymore. There are now simply too many satellites in orbit for it to function,” Quadrature’s Sebastian Neitsch reveals about the studio’s drawing machine Satelliten (2015) during a Manifest:IO lecture. When conceived, the piece would trace passing satellites in realtime on vintage maps. Since then, the number of commercial satellites has grown tenfold, Neitsch laments, overwhelming the machine and altering our night sky forever.

Manifest:IO
● 29/02/2024
“I hate this project. The idea that Jeff Koons may be the first point of contact when we encounter extraterrestrials—when they discover his crate left on the Moon—what a statement by humanity.”
– Artnet critic Ben Davis, lamenting the gaudiness of American artist Jeff Koons’ Moon Phases (2024). Recently deposited on the Moon by a SpaceX rocket, it entails 125 stainless steel sculptures (each named after a historical figure), which Davis derides as “space junk.” [quote edited]
The Art Angle
● 16/05/2023
“It underscores the idea of the private space sector as a plaything for the ultra-rich.”
– Art in America Associate Editor Emily Watlington, critiquing Jeff Koons’ Moon Phases (2023, image), which will send 125 sculptures by the American artist to the Moon on a SpaceX rocket
Art in America
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● 29/04/2021
“By the time we’d get consensus on policy, this is all going to be over. I just think that it’s a numbers game that astronomy probably cannot win.”
– John Barentine, American astronomer and Dark Sky Association’s public policy director, on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites light-polluting the skies. With more than 1,300 currently in orbit and goals of launching up to 30,000, “there’s little in the way of a future where you look up and just see the sky crawling,” writes Vox’ senior science reporter Brian Resnick.
Vox
● 01/12/2020
“If art is the human-friendly glove for touching transcendent reality—reality beyond our known beliefs and limits—then engineering is the bloodied hand that makes first contact.”
– Simulation artist Ian Cheng, on Crew Dragon Demo-2, the first crewed test flight of SpaceX’s reusable spacecraft that carried two NASA astronauts to the ISS on May 30—the event that according to Artforum’s survey most memorably caught Cheng’s attention in 2020
Artforum
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