Natal Kick, Cosmo Ground
Jaeik Kim
South Korea / 2025 / Fiction, Experimental / 12’37”I2603601
SYNOPSIS
Single Channel Audiovisual with sonifications, 12m 37s, 2025 Under the occupied shadows, floating cosmo ground, xenoliths, and the breaths perceived from all beings are increasingly coarsened by humanity’s collective experiments. This work considers all existing entities as pioneers of a sentient cosmos, thinking not only from Earth but from the universe at large, and positions both human and non-human elements as agents jointly adventuring through this unknown space, while exploring the ecological emergencies of the present. Starting from the current moment, when space development has once again surfaced as the foremost political theme worldwide, the work engages with the pioneering momentum of the new space age. From initiatives like SpaceX’s multi-planetary civilization program, which extends fascistic projects on Earth into the cosmos, Natal Kick Cosmo Ground seeks to chart new relationships. Natal Kick articulates asymmetric finitude as the release of uneven energy during a supernova explosion, marking the death of a star once considered infinite. In contrast, humanity projects its Earth-bound modes of dominance and thought beyond the planet, spreading terrestrial conflicts and unjust hierarchies into the stars and cosmos under the infinite nominality of the commons, while actively reinforcing extractivist practices. Contemporary society extends into a new space age through scientific production and experimentation that reach beyond the bounds of Earth. Private corporations and state governments attempting to exploit space treat its territory as an inexhaustible resource, deploying the finitude of the cosmos as a propaganda device for political ideologies that transcend national and anthropological borders. In this world, finite from the start, all agents of action may, as Latour suggests, be political agents, encompassing humans and non-humans alike. Here, cosmopolitics gestures toward a cooperative approach for addressing global crises. The work aspires to recreate our relationship with the cosmos and dreams of new political imaginaries. In doing so, it acknowledges all actors, including humans, non-humans, objects, and environments, as political agents and situates them within a shared discourse on planetary conditions.