Martian Encounters
Interdisciplinary conversations about otherness, belief, territory, and other factors shaping our future on Earth, and Mars, and beyond.
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“Martian Encounters: Imagining Alternate Futures” was a series of international, interdisciplinary conversations held on November 12 and 13, 2024, bringing together thinkers and practitioners from various fields of art, science, and literature to address four major themes shaping our visions of the future on Earth and beyond: Maps, Temples, Borders, and Ecosystems. Uniting scientific, social, political, and cultural perspectives, we explored these topics through a central concept of “otherness,” interrogating how we define people, things, and ideas as different, foreign, or alien.
The conversations were free and open to the public. All sessions were held in English and Spanish, with simultaneous translation between both languages, allowing a broad audience to follow the discussions in either language.
“Martian Encounters” aims to weave new threads of thought between disciplines related to space exploration and other planets—starting with Mars, the closest and most familiar planet in our Solar System—but also to human interaction with planet Earth. We hope that interdisciplinary dialogue can uncover new ways of thinking, enabling us to more responsibly and carefully address complex issues, such as sending humans to Mars and responding to the climate crisis on Earth.
“Martian Encounters” was organized thanks to a collaboration between the Center for Science and Imagination at Arizona State University, Future Tense (a project of ASU and New America), Marsarchive.org, El Cúmulo de Tesla, the Palacio de la Autonomía at UNAM, and the Art, Science, and Technologies program of the Institute of Astronomy at UNAM.
Videos, transcripts, and participant bios for each of our five sessions (Borders, Temples, Ecosystems, Maps, and a final synthesis session, Martian Weirdness) are archived on this page.
Session Videos, Transcripts, Bios
Borders, Tuesday, November 12, 2024, 9:00 – 10:30 am (Central Mexico Time)
Featuring astrophysicist Juan Claudio Toledo, multidisciplinary artist Martha Riva Palacio, and community-based researcher, media artist, and doula Alexandrina Agloro, moderated by Marcela Chao
Temples, Tuesday, November 12, 2024, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm (Central Mexico Time)
Featuring fiction author and editor Erick J. Mota, fiction author and Arabic Studies scholar Luis Carlos Barragán, and essayist, poet, and analog astronaut Kate Greene, moderated by Libia Brenda
Ecosystems, Tuesday, November 12, 2024, 4:00 – 5:30 pm (Central Mexico Time)
Featuring biologist and science communicator David Venegas, space architecture researcher Elena Rocchi, and ecologist, environmental educator, and writer Jessie Rack, moderated by Alejandra Espino del Castillo
Maps, Wednesday, November 13, 2024, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm (Central Mexico Time)
Featuring video game designer Randy Smith, literature scholar and language activist Mito Reyes, and Indigenous futurism scholar Grace Dillon, moderated by Joey Eschrich
Martian Weirdness, Wednesday, November 13, 2024, 4:00 – 5:30 pm (Central Mexico Time)
Featuring space anthropologist Anne Johnson, physicist and astrobiologist Antígona Segura, fiction writer and journalist Gabriela Damián Miravete, and poet, essayist, and analog astronaut Christopher Cokinos, moderated by Marcela Chao
Martian Calendar
Download this dual calendar, created as part of the project by Marsarchive.org, covering the passage of time on Earth and Mars for the period spanning November 12, 2024 through September 30, 2026. The calendar invites us to think about the implications of an interplanetary society, and how our sense of the passage of time is shaped by planetary cycles and orbits.
Project Team
Marcela Chao Ruiz (México) is a multifaceted cultural agent who explores the convergence between art, science, and psychology. Trained as a psychologist and holding a master’s degree in museology, she has worked as a cultural manager, programmer, and curator in public and private institutions, including the 55th Venice Biennale, the Centro de la Imagen, and the contemporary art school SOMA. Founder of Marsarchive.org, a platform that merges contemporary art and space exploration, her work focuses on creating communities of collective thought to reflect on alternative futures. Her interdisciplinary approach seeks to expand the cultural imagination about space and the implications of interplanetary exploration.
Libia Brenda (México) is a writer, editor, and translator. She is the author of the short story collection De qué silencio vienes, co-author of the book Mis pies tiene raíz, and was selected for the PECDA-Puebla 2024 short story program. Her work has been translated from Spanish into English, Italian, and Portuguese, and has been published in several anthologies. She collaborates with various independent and speculative projects such as the multidisciplinary collective Cúmulo de Tesla and the Mexicona: Imaginación y Futuro festival. She has been a member of the Climate Imagination Fellowship at the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. She has been nominated for the Hugo Award twice. In 2024, she made the selection, introduction, and translation into Spanish of The Bones of the Earth and Other Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. She is the editor of Odo Ediciones, an independent, non-profit publishing project specialized in speculative genres.
Joey Eschrich (United States) is the managing editor at the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University and assistant director of Future Tense, a partnership of ASU and New America that explores emerging technologies and society. He has edited a number of books of science fiction, nonfiction, and art, including The Climate Action Almanac (2024), supported by a grant from the ClimateWorks Foundation, and Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities (2017), supported by a grant from NASA, the U.S. space agency. He hosts CSI Skill Tree, a series on video games and worldbuilding, and edits Imaginary Papers, a quarterly newsletter on science fiction, the past and future, and the imagination.
Alejandra Espino (México) creates comics, illustrations, and works on projects that excite her, as long as she can draw and share experiences with other artists. She was awarded Young Creators grant for 2012-2013 and the Poesía en Voz Alta award as part of the AA&A collective in 2016, and was selected for the Transcómic project during the Germany-Mexico Dual Year in 2017. She has published in various anthologies in Mexico and internationally, as well as in self-published projects.