We creatures of habit, looking only at our feet, too rarely see the planets and moons of outer space as a place, somewhere to go. In your town you see a new park, and there you may walk. In a book, you read of a city, and see on the map where you may travel. But thirty years ago men walked on the moon. Have you looked at their travel pictures? Have you seen the mountains and dusty hills? When you look up and see the moon, do you imagine it as a place where you can go? Have you seen the valleys of the moon?
Now further off is Mars, too far to see directly as a land. But already we travel to Mars with cameras and robots. We circle Mars with satellites and look down on huge ancient volcanoes. We are starting to know Mars as a place where we can go. Imagine being there, a desolate place, with desert beauty. Perhaps soon we shall send a plane or a balloon to fly through the long, yawning valleys. On your television, you will see Mars as easily as the American southwest desert. Will you begin to see Mars as a place to go?
Before a long journey, comes a dream of travel, a thought of being somewhere, of seeing and feeling its nature. As our robots move like toys on Mars, we see already where we shall walk, what cavernous rilles we will explore, the plains on which we will build new towns. We design habitats, and greenhouses, and then colonies. Melting the ice cap, we might sow life and create air to breath. We are walking already in the rusty land of Mars, on our neighboring planet, dreaming of a place to go.
-- Appeared in Bonami, F. & Obrist, H. U. (Eds.), Sogni/Dreams, pp. 30-31.
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Per L'Arte (Venice Biennial of Visual Arts).