Creative Resistance and Satellite Imaginaries

The paper explores two critiques of the purpose of space technology in the formational, early years that shifted the imaginary of space technology away from the conquest of space towards the uses of orbiting satellites for Earth. Resistance to the competitive exploration activities of the Soviet Union and United States and their increasing technological advantage emerged from various countries around the world during the 1970s. Two of these resistant moves are presented in this paper as creative and innovative critiques which reinterpret the design and purpose of new satellite technologies in different ways. The first is a UN Treaty signed in 1976 by eight Equatorial countries claiming sovereignty over the geostationary orbit. The second is the Indian space programme's Satellite Instructional Television Experiment that took place from August 1975 to August 1976 and was an experiment in combining space technology with television to bring health and farming information to villages deemed most in need and most distant from the emerging concept of the Global Village. Both have been the stimulus for long-term art projects I have developed in collaboration with others. In hindsight, one of the reasons we embarked on these projects was an identification with the subaltern position each expose in the determination of space technology. Another was out identification as artists with the spirit of creative resistance inherent in each. The paper outlines the creative innovation and critique of each example and then gives a brief overview of the artworks they inspired.