Ad Astra: Eduardo Kac and Narratives of Progress

On January 15th, 2025, the private aerospace company Firefly launched its first ever lunar lander aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. At my time of writing, the rocket is currently en route to the surface of the moon. This collaboration between Firefly and SpaceX is the latest example of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, in which NASA contracts private companies to make lunar deliveries on their behalf. The CLPS initiative speaks to the increasing privatization of space travel, a process reflecting the techno-futurist escapism of billionaires and refuting the frequently proffered conception of outer space as a “global commons” (Pic et al. 289). For NASA, the initiative serves not only to enable “U.S. scientific and technical studies on the surface of the Moon,” but also supports a “growing lunar economy with American companies” (Doyle). Demonstrably, U.S. involvement in space travel has become inextricably entangled with the interests of the private sector. It is notable, then, that this lunar lander contains not only scientific and technical equipment for NASA, but a piece of artwork as well: Adsum by Eduardo Kac, created specifically to live in a lunar environment.

Eduardo Kac, Adsum, 2019

Adsum is a 1x1x1cm glass cube with a series of symbols laser-engraved inside. The symbols, described as a “spatial poem,” are designed to be interpreted in multiple directions, a response to the multiple gravitational paradigms the cube will experience (“Adsum” 20). The hourglass and infinity symbols can be read as representing human and cosmic time scales, respectively, indicating the role Adsum plays in bringing the two together as it occupies the lunar surface ad infinitum. On his website, Kac details the five phases of the project, from early proof-of-concept to final sculpture. Over the course of these five phases, various preliminary versions of Adsum traveled to the International Space Station, the lunar-orbiting Orion spacecraft, and the lunar surface itself. Through his detailed description of the years-long process, Kac demonstrates his deep knowledge and enthusiasm for his craft. 

While the project of creating artwork for the moon is undoubtedly fascinating, Kac seems far less interested in examining the ideologies which underpin his work or the systems making it possible. No phase of the project would have been possible without the vast amount of resources expended by both governmental and private space programs in the name of capital or national supremacy. However, rather than critiquing these systems, Adsum reinforces a kind of human exceptionalism under which expansion into outer space is imperative. The title of the work, Adsum, means “Here I am” in Latin, equivalent to the “Here!” of a roll call. Kac states that he considers the title a response to the phrase “ad astra” (“to the stars”) commonly used in reference to space travel (“Art on the Moon” 20). It remains unclear whether the responding “I” refers to a homogenized collective humanity or the artist himself. 

By anticipating a call to humanity from the stars, Adsum makes the need to respond by expanding beyond the planet Earth appear self-evident. Kac certainly believes in this inevitability, anticipating somewhat conceitedly that far-future “space archaeologists and astro-art historians” will be able to find and appreciate his work (“Art on the Moon” 23). Indeed, Kac’s space artwork contributes to the ideological projects of the Deleuzian “royal science,” defined by Braidotti as “institutionally implemented and well-funded” science which is “compatible with the economic imperatives of advanced capitalism” (47). He receives support from this royal science in the form of the space program, while producing work reinforcing its cultural or aesthetic necessity. In the process, his own brand is elevated. While Kac’s words frame expansion into outer space as humanity’s inevitable future, an attention to his collaboration with the royal sciences reveal his active role in making that future a reality. 

In a period of ecological and social upheaval like the one we live in, progressivist narratives of space exploration appear particularly troubling. Kac’s participation in narratives of outer space as the “final frontier,” in which Adsum stands in for the artist as a kind of pioneer for a “new cultural phase in humanity’s history,” suggest an evasion of the many entangled issues that lie inside the Earth’s biosphere. (“Art on the Moon” 21). Kac frames this evasion as a heroic break from tradition, pointing out that, “The entire history of art is predicated on this planet’s gravity, on this planet’s atmosphere and temperature variations, on this planet’s ability to partially shield itself from cosmic radiation” (“Art on the Moon” 21). In creating artwork for the moon, he seeks to transcend these previously implicit limitations and expand the possibilities of what forms art can take. However, the shared material conditions of Earthbound art and Earthbound life are part of what enables such far-reaching engagement between the two. Kac’s Adsum, despite being designed to live on the moon, does not bind itself to any location; rather, it imagines itself as part of a movement, one of humanity’s first steps on a new journey of cosmic discovery. The work’s placelessness untethers it from the conditions of the present and projects a future in which the work’s significance can be maximally realized. 

In the end, my purpose is not primarily to cast aspersions on Kac’s motivations for Adsum. Rather, I want to prompt a reexamination of some of the basic questions concerning art. What can this artwork do, and who is it for? The space travel industry and the CLPS initiative exemplify an ideology in which progress for progress’s sake is always justified, but that ideology is one of many. Artworks like Adsum that reinforce popular narratives in high-profile settings have the power to naturalize these ideologies unless they are properly examined. Through such a naturalization, Adsum compels its audience to subscribe to its ideology in order to comprehend its significance. That kind of transformative power can surely be put to a better use in the service of the present people of Earth in all their variation, rather than for the benefit of an imaginary, homogenized, spacefaring humanity inhabiting one of many possible futures.