FORUM STATEMENT

What does it look like when we imagine a new astro-vocabulary?

What can emerge when artists, cultural practitioners and critical thinkers enter into dialogue with the space sector? 

This is what we will explore at the KOSMICA Forum 2026: a meeting point for a new cultural map, where we can gather, identify the urgencies of our relationship with space and act proactively.

Space activities can act as a societal and personal mirror. By looking outwards, they reveal the values, assumptions and systems we carry with us from Earth, and how we understand what it means to be human and more-than-human. Questioning the status quo in space can open up a missing vocabulary for collectively re-evaluating the futures we imagine and pursue.

At a time when human, environmental and space rights are increasingly contested, decision-making is becoming more algorithmic, while the questions themselves remain deeply human. We hear the concerns, debate the consequences and search for ways to act. Space can be understood as another Janus: one face looking back towards the cultures, knowledge and practices through which we have mapped and navigated the stars; the other looking towards futures we are yet to understand, without a clear language for navigating them.

It is within this uncertainty that KOSMICA Forum proposes astro-vocabularies: new ways of speaking about space and the futures we are moving towards. The words we choose, the questions we ask and the ideas we put into conversation can open new ways of understanding our relationship with space. Astro-vocabularies bring the perspectives of arts and humanities into conversation with the technical fields of space, creating room for different forms of knowledge to meet, question and contribute.

In this year’s KOSMICA Forum, we begin by examining how human relationships extend beyond Earth and what this might mean for the cosmic futures we imagine. Sustainability, public space policy and the arts provide points of departure for questioning how these futures are conceived, whose perspectives enter the conversation, and what possibilities might emerge from bringing them together.

We have conceived the Forum as a participatory gathering where these questions can unfold through open discussions, workshops, flash talks and performances. It brings together different forms of knowledge, practice and experience, creating a space for exchange, experimentation and collective thinking. KOSMICA Forum is also an invitation to question what we take for granted, cross disciplinary boundaries and develop new vocabularies for thinking about our possible futures in space.

We welcome proposals that engage critically or experimentally with these subjects, particularly those that cross disciplines, connect different fields of practice, or introduce unexpected perspectives.