Now that the publication of the Epstein Files has prompted many people to reconsider a series of conspiracy theories to which, in less suspicious times, we would hardly have attributed the slightest credibility, some have returned to asking a question that seemed by now relegated to the margins of public debate: did we really go to the Moon? Whatever the answer—and it is probably no—the fact remains that, with Earth increasingly close to climate collapse (yes, even if by now almost no one talks about it anymore) and with Jeff Bezos who, through his aerospace company Blue Origin, continues relentlessly to work toward establishing a permanent human presence on the satellite through the Blue Moon lunar lander, it is not so absurd to begin seriously considering the possibility—rather unsettling, in my opinion—that, in a not-too-distant future, turbo-capitalist neoliberalism might push itself to the point of attempting the colonization of the Moon.
To interrogate some of the main technological, ecological, and political transformations of the present, the artistic collective Liminal State has developed THEIA PARADIGM, a future fiction project that uses precisely the imaginary of lunar colonization—reconstructed in an installation form in Rome and open to visitors until March 28—as a tool for reflecting on the contradictions of our time. The work belongs to that tradition of critical science fiction that employs the future not so much to predict what will come, but rather to analyze the present from an oblique perspective. In short, it activates what scholars such as Donna Haraway, Fredric Jameson, and Darko Suvin have described as cognitive estrangement: a form of imaginative distance capable of making visible structures of power and social models that, in everyday life, we tend to consider natural or inevitable.Set around the year 2100, the underground lunar colony THEIA takes shape as a speculative environment built from techno-scientific data, immersive architectures, and participatory narrative protocols. On the surface it appears to be a settlement designed to ensure human survival beyond the ecological limits of Earth; however, as the simulation gradually takes form, a series of political and technological tensions emerge that feel surprisingly familiar. THEIA seems in fact to amplify dynamics already operating in the present: digital colonialism, the growing spread of algorithmic governance systems, the intensification of the global ecological crisis, and the gradual transformation of capitalism into an infrastructural system capable of extending far beyond the boundaries of the planet.
But first a small disclaimer: it is important to keep in mind that the concept of future fiction differs from traditional science fiction because of its close relationship with the technological and political present. Rather than constructing completely imaginary universes, future fiction is grounded in existing or plausible technologies and in socioeconomic processes that are already underway. Indeed, the colony does not appear as a distant utopia but as the logical extension of infrastructures and systems already present in our world. Biometric monitoring technologies, controlled agricultural systems, renewable energy infrastructures, and algorithmic selection platforms constitute concrete elements that make the scenario not only imaginable, but also disturbingly plausible.
Entry into THEIA takes place through an online aptitude test that evaluates the individual’s relationship with limits, rules, and social conflict. The device immediately introduces a dimension of algorithmic selection and behavioral profiling, recalling the operational logic of contemporary digital platforms, in which users are continuously classified through systems of data collection, behavioral analysis, and predictive models.
In historical colonialism, territorial control constituted the prerequisite for economic extraction. In digital colonialism, by contrast, the territory becomes informational: platforms, databases, and algorithms organize and exploit data flows on a global scale. The colony of THEIA radicalizes this logic by transforming the entirety of human life into a monitored and optimized system.
Within the colony every vital parameter—from available energy to air quality—is constantly measured and managed through centralized technical systems. The control room represents the decision-making core from which the energetic, biological, and logistical flows of the community are regulated. This model of governance recalls emerging forms of algorithmic governance, in which social and political decisions are increasingly delegated to automated systems.
Another fundamental axis of the project concerns the ecological dimension. THEIA is designed as a completely artificial ecosystem, excavated within the lunar regolith to protect its inhabitants from radiation and extreme temperature fluctuations. All the resources necessary for survival—oxygen, water, food, and energy—must be produced and recycled within a closed system.
This model recalls some of the main contemporary research on artificial ecology and life-support systems for long-duration space missions. However, in the narrative of the lunar colony these systems also assume a symbolic meaning. The biosphere no longer has anything to do with a natural environment but becomes a technical infrastructure designed to guarantee the continuity of life.In this sense THEIA represents an extreme form of what some theorists define as reverse terraforming: it is not the extraterrestrial environment that is transformed in order to resemble Earth, but humanity itself that must adapt its social and biological organization to a radically artificial environment. The bio-farm, with its artificially illuminated greenhouses, becomes the place where life is continuously regenerated through technical processes. Nature is no longer an autonomous context but a productive system that is managed and monitored.
Today numerous space agencies and private companies are developing mining programs and permanent infrastructures in space. These initiatives open the possibility of a new economic frontier based on access to extraterrestrial resources. The colony THEIA can be interpreted as a simulation of the political implications of this scenario. The presence of an imaginary corporation—Theia Corp.—recalls the model of colonial companies that, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, administered territories and populations in imperial contexts.
This parallel suggests that the colonization of space could reproduce historical dynamics of exploitation and inequality. The selection of inhabitants, expulsions, and centralized control of resources indicate that the new lunar civilization is not immune to the power logics that characterized terrestrial colonialism.
The Moon thus becomes a mirror of the present: an imaginary territory in which the tensions between technology, power, and sustainability are made visible and amplified. In short, THEIA is a critical device that forces us to question the political, ethical, and epistemological conditions that would make conceivable a human civilization beyond Earth. A series of questions therefore emerges.
A first issue concerns the regime of governance that would make such a project possible. If survival in a radically hostile environment requires highly integrated systems for controlling resources—energy, oxygen, water, food production—then the management of these infrastructures inevitably implies forms of centralized coordination and continuous monitoring. The question therefore becomes: what political model could simultaneously guarantee the stability of a fragile ecosystem and the freedom of its inhabitants? In other words, would a sustainable extraterrestrial civilization necessarily require a reduction of individual freedoms?
A second knot concerns the issue of selection. In THEIA access to the colony is filtered through an aptitude test that evaluates the compatibility of candidates with a highly regulated social system. In this scenario, the promise of “a new beginning for humanity” could conceal the reproduction, on a cosmic scale, of the inequalities that have characterized terrestrial history. This element introduces a crucial ethical problem: who decides who has the right to participate in the new civilization?
A third question concerns the continuity between terrestrial colonialism and space colonization. The rhetoric of exploration and the frontier has historically accompanied processes of territorial appropriation and resource exploitation. Would the colonization of space represent a transcendence of colonial logics, or rather their extension beyond planetary boundaries?
Finally, the project invites us to confront a more radical question, one that is rarely made explicit in discussions about space exploration: the very desirability of survival at any cost. Much of the contemporary narrative surrounding space colonization assumes that the expansion of humanity beyond Earth is an intrinsically positive objective, almost an evolutionary necessity. Yet this premise deserves to be questioned. If the construction of extraterrestrial civilizations were to require highly controlled, selective, and ecologically artificial social systems, to what extent would such a future truly be preferable to accepting planetary limits? In other words, the question is not only how humanity might survive beyond Earth, but whether such survival necessarily represents an unquestionable value.
Laura Cocciolillo