Matjaž Tančič Takes Us Through Ongoing Experiments Into How Humanity Might Live on Mars

In this project, the artist travels across the world to document a time when space science is supporting terrestrial fiction to imagine and develop possible ways for humanity to call the red planet home.

In 2019, China’s space agency successfully landed the first spacecraft on the far side of the moon. NASA plans to again put humans on the Moon as part of a strategy to reach Mars by the 2030s.  A flight to Mars will take up to 333 days, and will carry an international, mixed-gender crew of scientists on a spaceship built with an intricate array of public and private technology from numerous nations. It is a new space race, but the end result this time around will be collaborative. 

There are the well-known billionaire game-changers in the private space business like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, but this project is interested in the lesser-known, but no less dedicated, players along the journey to Mars: the idiosyncratic visionaries, often cash-strapped and working in the grey areas of the law, that are developing technologies for space travel and exploration. 

Around the world, interest in space is growing and for the past two years I have been closely following advancements in Mars colonisation research in Asia, United States and Europe, from Mars architects, doctors, farmers, and engineers to homemade rocket builders

Words and pictures by Matjaž Tančič 

-------------- Matjaž Tančič (1982) is a lens-based artist part of Inland Collective, working mainly on documentary and independent projects between China and Slovenia. His work explores the lines between documentary, portrait and art photography to engage with social and cultural issues. He likes to experiment within the photographic medium and is mainly known for his 3D stereography projects. Tančič holds a BA in photography from the University of the Arts, London. Follow him on Instagram and PhMuseum.

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This feature is part of Story of the Week, a selection of relevant projects from our community handpicked by the PhMuseum curators.