The Sky is the Limit. Reading circle and banner-making workshop

For millennia, the sky has been a site of guidance and wonder. Yet today, this same expanse is inscribed with histories of domination: from the language of “colonizing Mars” and extractive visions of outer space, to satellite networks, drone corridors, militarized borders, surveillance, and the accumulation of debris in Earth’s orbit.

The Sky Has Limits is a reading circle and collective textile-making workshop that explores the sky as both a shared commons and a contested political space.

We will read short texts from different genres and forms of knowledge – ranging from Indigenous creation stories such as the Haudenosaunee story of Sky Woman, to poetry, scientific writings, and contemporary critical texts on cosmology, atmosphere, and outer space. Together, we will consider how different ways of understanding the sky shape our ideas of inner and outer space, belonging, movement, territory, freedom, and liberation.

Alongside the reading circle, participants will paint and write on large pieces of fabric, creating textile banners that respond to the texts and conversations. The finished textiles will accompany us to the kite flying, becoming part of the gathering in the air.

The sky becomes a reminder that it is not free, that we are not free. Yet in our longing, we reach toward a sky that can still inspire wonder.