How Does the Moon See the Earth? Reversing the terrestrial gaze

Throughout our terrestrial history, humankind has gazed up at the Moon. The Moon has fascinated and inspired people of all cultures and disciplines, informing art, folklaw, and religion; provoking scientific speculation; and inspiring a desire for spaceflight. With the question, “How does the Moon see the Earth?” I sought to reverse this gaze. Stepping away from our anthropocentric vision of the Moon as Earth’s lesser companion, I wanted to allow the Moon to take centre-stage, and to give it agency. I wanted to imagine that for every question humankind has asked about the Moon, it too has asked questions about us and our terrestrial home.

This question invites us to speculate in ways that the space-faring community often does not: deprioritizing the terrestrial perspective. If we exchange the terrestrial gaze for the lunar gaze, we invite critical reflection on the Earth, anthropocentrism, and terrestrial practices.

Further questions then arise:

• Does the rhetoric of human lunar exploration stand up to scrutiny?
• How might the Earth and its inhabitants be understood by non-human observers?
• How does it feel to be the (passive) subject of fascination from afar; of exploration; and potentially of settlement and colonisation?

An obvious starting point for this discussion is the “Overview Effect” (see Frank White, 1987). When we move outside of the Earth’s atmosphere and look back at our home planet we come to appreciate that it – and by extension, humankind – is small and vulnerable in the context of the infinite universe. The Apollo 8 photograph that came to be known as Earthrise provided humankind with a view of the Earth from just above the lunar surface, capturing the contrast between the vibrant colour of Earth and the grey tones of the Moon and the blackness of space, and in doing so inspiring an appreciation of the Earth as a lone lifeship floating in the vast, empty expanse of the universe. The influence of this image can still be felt today in our understanding of the Earth as unique and worthy of preservation.

The Moon sits far enough from Earth to appreciate its insignificance, and yet the lunar perspective is not interchangeable with the perspective of human lunar explorers. For the Moon, the Overview Effect is not a revelation, but rather, the mundane, everyday. The Moon may take for granted the Earth’s insignificance. Does this mean that, for the Moon, human lunar exploration is a revelation? Does Earth suddenly seem more significant to the Moon when humankind makes contact, lands on its surface, becomes an interplanetary species?

We ask these questions in the context of a particular moment in the early stages of the commercial space race, in which humankind is actively pursuing potential “colonisation” of space. This journey towards making humankind an interplanetary species will begin with a permanent lunar settlement. As we begin to colonise the Moon and beyond, it is inevitable that we will think and act according to terrestrial frameworks, and we will carry terrestrial ideas, ideals, practices and traditions with us to foreign planets. In generations to come, however, humankind will develop post-Earth cultures, and we may begin to look at the Earth not as our home but as one of many, with peculiar practices that do not make sense to generations who have been raised on other planets.

When we speak of space colonisation we must be wary of the colonial practices that have characterised exploration of new frontiers on Earth. There is a risk that the future of space exploration may follow the same pattern as historical exploration of the Earth, beginning with exploration and leading to exploitation. While we are at risk of depleting the finite resources of Earth, space appears to have the potential for “consequence free” exploitation. However, “the frontier metaphor”, argues Lisa Messeri (2017), “sets up outer space as a passive landscape with no purpose other than human sustenance”.

When selecting works for Moon Bound, it was very important to us that we invite responses in any language, in efforts to make the book as post-colonial as possible, and to highlight conversions about the democratization and colonisation of space. With this book and other spaceworks, we are extending human culture into space, and it matters what aspects of human culture we send to form the foundations of interplanetary society. Future readers of this book – be they terrestrial visitors, lunar settlers, or their descendants – need to see representations of Earth and terrestrial cultures that are diverse, painting a picture of Earthlings not as one people but many.

These ambitions for diversity in space colonisation provide a reason for ensuring that artists are engaged in space exploration, and that art is sent into space. Increasingly, the themes of discourse surrounding spaceflight have begun to shift from space exploration to “space culturalization” (Turšič 2014) and democratization. Humankind is a social, cultural species, and we cannot claim to have fully democratized space unless there is representation of all aspects of human culture. Through arts, we can resist the dominant cultures that have shaped space exploration to date, ask different questions about the Earth, the Moon, and humankind’s place in the universe.

Nonetheless, we cannot escape the fact that, regardless of how we define, reinforce or resist the differences between ourselves, all humans are strangers to the Moon. From the perspective of the Moon, we are all one; explorers or invaders – we are all Earthlings. To humans experiencing the Overview Effect the oneness of Earth connotes unity, but for the Moon, all humans are Other. Therefore, is the question of human’s responsibilities in space too large for us to answer ourselves? We need to ask ourselves whether it is possible to engage with any kind of respectful exploration of extraterrestrial space, without considering non-human perspectives.