Etcétera

Argentinian collective Etcétera’s ambitious intergalactic campaign LIBERATE MARS, presented at the 13th Berlin Biennale in the form of a newly commissioned interactive installation, is a call to unfree the neoliberal systems wreaking havoc on Earth’s Indigenous resources and imaginaries. In 2005, Etcétera co-founded the International Errorist movement, an international organization that advocates error as a philosophy of life. Maintaining their “errorist” stance, once defined as “an erroneous philosophical position,” Etcétera moves beyond the neo-retro Dada aesthetic of the Errorist Cabaret (2009) to launch a post-futuristic, albeit equally absurdist, critical moving-image aesthetic. This new approach challenges the falsity and coloniality inherent in the multiplanetary life narratives, promoted by private aerospace companies, such as the SpaceX propaganda spectrum.

Focusing their lenses on the so-called Lithium Triangle—comprising the three Latin American countries of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, where Indigenous territories are exploited for lithium extraction—Etcétera also invites the public to direct their gaze toward their own involvement in extractivism and space fantasy from an infinity greenscreen room. They do so by juxtaposing a classic video projection featuring a film that is occasionally interrupted by a screensaver-like Martian landscape with an archetypal green-screen room for chroma keying, only to later swap their roles. The unsuspecting participant public, equipped with space-themed props left in the green room, may find themselves propelled into the Martian landscape of the projection, implying implicit complicity as they simultaneously perform the first protest on Mars. Ever.

Text: Claire Toncan