Eva Díaz's 'After Spaceship Earth' Examines R. Buckminster Fuller's Legacy in Contemporary Art

Historian and critic Eva Díaz has published 'After Spaceship Earth: Art, Technology, and Other Science Fictions' through Yale University Press, priced at £45 in hardcover. The book analyzes how R. Buckminster Fuller's techno-utopian ideas have influenced artistic practices over the past decade. Fuller taught at Black Mountain College from 1948 to 1949, where his geodesic dome designs became central to his legacy. Díaz explores both positive and negative aspects of Fuller's impact, noting his work as a US military contractor whose dome designs were used for Defense Early Warning installations across 4,800 kilometers of the Arctic. Contemporary artists like Mary Mattingly, Oscar Tuazon, Ben Coonley, Jacolby Satterwhite, Hito Steyerl, and Trevor Paglen have incorporated domes in works that critique surveillance, information flows, and communitarian ideals. The book also connects Fuller's influence to pop culture through the 1963 Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles and Douglas Trumbull's special effects work for Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968). Later sections shift focus to Sun Ra as an Afrofuturist touchstone, examining works like Neïl Beloufa's 2007 video 'Kempinski'. The review, published in the April 2025 issue of ArtReview, critiques the book's structure, noting omissions of figures like Ruth Asawa and Norman Foster while suggesting the material might work better as an exhibition than as historical analysis.