Spaceship Beben
Spaceship Beben is a collective of cosmonauts with expertise in various fields of feminist creative practice, such as art, curating, activism, writing, research, radio and music making, theater, performance, cooking, divination and political organizing.
Together we harness our talents to question and interrupt mainstream ideas of space travel, space science and space research, using decolonial radical thinking and action.
We use science fiction as a blueprint for the just futures we deserve as multiply marginalized FLINTAQ+ (Femme, Lesbian, Intersex, Nonbinary, Trans, Ace/ Aro/ Agender, Queer+) primarily using the creative formats of worldbuilding and soundmaking to manifest alternative timelines in our everyday lives.
The Beben creates regular gathering spaces, online and offline, for femme bodied people interested in experiencing and collectively manifesting feminist science fiction futures that operate outside capitalist patriarchy.
Initiated by Promona Sengupta and working as a loose collective since 2021, that comes together to experiment with immersive strategies of queer feminist solidarity and science fiction futurism, the Beben is a gathering space for marginalized femme bodies to experience life-saving mutual aid, liberatory imagination, and an embodied feminist community built on joy, care and radical political actions.
“The primary objective of our mission is to search for a life outside alienation, especially for the marginalized in this universe. We are very aware of how space exploration is controlled by colonial entities like nation-states and their defence departments, the same entities that oppress the likes of us and other marginalized people. With our daily struggle against our oppressors, we rewrite this colonial script that views space as an expansionist playground.” — Captain Pro
Landings
The Beben lands every summer at a waterbody near the city of Berlin to recruit new cosmonauts and perform anti-gravity exercises and practice flights in the Earth’s atmosphere. Together, the crew take long swims, eat and drink, and nurse each other’s wounds from the long journey. We document our landings and conversations and turn them into a sonic archive and radio detailing our space travels.
Sounds
The Beben crew create sounds and immersive gatherings together, that they share in exhibition spaces and radio shows occasionally. Check out some radio dispatches below, from The Beben Crew’s weekly radio show Unidentified Sonic Objects at House of Kal at nGbK, Berlin 2023.
The Timeline That Cannot Be
Unidentified Sonic Objects Ep. 6
In conversation with Prof. Tithi Bhattacharya, Captain Pro and Agent Jori discuss loss of time, through an engagement in radical revolutionary imagination and “peoples’ songs” from Leftist history. The cosmonauts stumble upon and discuss a foundational film essay from Planet Earth — La Jetée (1962) by Chris Marker — and slowly peel off the layer of coded information on time travel, nuclear war, and the wear and tear of chronosickness left behind in the work.
Space, The Final Frontier
Unidentified Sonic Objects Ep. 7
Captain Pro and Stowaway Adri stumble upon a terrestrial film from 1977 — Perfumed Nightmare by Kidlat Tahimik — and develop a research interest in the colonial relationship of Planet Earth with its own definitions of space. Tahimik’s reflections on migration, and a decolonial lens on space research lead the cosmonauts into the world of contemporary artist Rohini Devasher, and her deep involvement with archiving and observing the sky, clouds, stars and planets.
Bodyboats and Bordersongs
Unidentified Sonic Objects Ep. 8
Cultural historian, archivist and musician Rongili Biswas talks to Captain Pro and Cosmic Oceanographer Sumo about bhatiyali and shari, tidal songs of boat people of the Bengal delta. The songs that she learned from her father, communist revolutionary cultural activist Hemanga Biswas, remain some of the most potent memory shrines for the pain and trauma of Partition, refugeehood and survival. How does one make a voice travel across borders, riding the tides of the mangrove waters? How does it make us feel, cosmonauts far away from our home planets, trying to sustain our ties with our folks across lightyears?
Using our collectivized presence as a motor to augment our lived oppressions with speculative liberatory timelines, the Beben experiments with time and space travel.
Are you a femme-bodied space traveller interested in joining a like-minded crew? Contact the Beben crew TODAY!