Crew 292 Annalea Beattie

Dr Annalea Beattie (Expedition Commander)

Profile:

Dr. Annalea Beattie is an artist who uses art as a methodology for thinking about how we might live together in the future on Mars. Her art practice is set on space science expeditions to extreme environments on Earth, those that have conditions analogous to other celestial bodies. This is her third trip to Utah. In her last rotation to the Mars Desert Research Station, Annalea was a crew member of the three month space simulation and science mission Mars 160.

Annalea Beattie is a Director of Mars Society Australia and of the National Space Society of Australia. She has contributed to four Springer volumes on extra-terrestrial liberty, speculating through her art practice how art making can sustain and invigorate communities off-Earth. Annalea is Adjunct Professor at the Centre of Excellence in Astrobiology, Amity University, Mumbai. She is a member of the International Dark Sky Association and The Association of Mars Explorers.

Research:

For Mangalyaatra Crew 292, Annalea’s art-based research will focus on environmental stewardship, exploring a politics of care through dialogue, reflection and making art. Through co-creation, art making will address the nuances and complexities of what constitutes a frontier environment, looking closely at concepts of ‘wilderness’ and ‘free’ space. With the aim of broadening our understanding of how we imprint onto worlds that are not our own, this project thinks through materials and making to develop an ethics of reciprocal responsibility, one that can be translated to elsewhere to Ladakh and when we travel off-Earth to Mars. This project will emphasise our collective responsibility to both the human and the nonhuman and the potential of art as a catalyst for change.