Just a little before he died, theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking warned that we only have hundred years left on Earth. In order to save human species we need to get ready to colonize another planet. Our time here is coming to an end. In the performance I invite the audience to imagine the greatest ever departure.
I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth and make a new home on another planet. To stay risks annihilation that could be an asteroid hitting the Earth, it could be a new virus, climate change, nuclear war, artificial intelligence gone rogue. For humans to survive, I believe we must have preparations in place within 100 years.
Our species has evolved to live on Earth, so our new home must be very similar. It must be similar sized rocky planet with similar gravity. It must have an atmosphere with just a right amount of oxygen. And crucially it must be the right distance from its star that water exists as a liquid. A journey of two thousand years isn’t impossible. We present spaceships, where successive generations live and die in space. It might not sound pleasant, but theirs would be the sacrifice for the furthering of our species. Their descendants would be the ones who ultimately colonize Proxima B.
Many of the reasons I think humans need to leave the Earth are down to the way we have used technology, pollution, climate change and even overpopulation spring to mind. In the next 100 years we will embark on our greatest ever adventure. Our destiny is in the stars. Space, here we come. Stephen Hawking 2017
PERFORMANCES
Interval 10 Festival organized by Paersche, Oberhausen, Germany 2019. Performensk Festival, Minsk, Belarus 2019. New Performance Turku Festival, Turku, Finland 2019. Imagining Futures seminar, Turku University, Turku, Finland 2019.
Photos: Semion Kulikov / Performensk Festival, Minsk, Belarus 2019 (performance duration 1 h)
Photos: Jörn Vanselow / Interval 10 Festival, Oberhausen, Germany 2019