Dana Burton is an anthropologist and creative whose work sits at the intersection of the anthropology of outer space, feminist science and technology studies, and black critical thought. She is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research. She also directs the Anthropology and Design minor.

Diving into the world of astrobiology, Dana’s ethnographic and archival research explored how the science seeks to understand the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. She followed scientists from the Atacama Desert, Chile to NASA centers around the US, to (models of) planetary bodies across the solar system to trace these efforts to comprehend and materialize life beyond Earth as well as parse the complex assemblage that becomes constituted in the process. Based on this work, she is writing a book manuscript, tentatively titled: Astrobiology in Absentia: Tracing Life Detection on Earth and Beyond. Dana teaches classes on anthropology and design, sensory-based methods, and the potential of the planetary. She is also engaged in artistic practices and draws on her background in dance, painting, and poetry across her research and teaching endeavors.

At GIDEST, Dana will engage in a creative experiment to elucidate the core of the book manuscript, which explores NASA’s life detection efforts as a technical and governmental objective. At the crux of this astrobiological pursuit of life, scientists grapple—in collaboration with microbes, bioinformatic software, technical schematics, and spacecraft—to produce knowledge about biology on an interplanetary scale. In doing so, many astrobiologists describe their work as enacting modes of suspension—in which Earth-based metrics of life are balanced with a calculated openness to the potential difference that life beyond Earth could exhibit. Suspension as it unfolds through the operation of missions, models, and trans-scientific methods becomes a site to probe the dynamics at play in detecting life, derivative of the sensibilities configuring astrobiology itself. However, is suspension actually undergirding life detection work?

Over the fellowship year, to probe the generativity of suspension, Dana will experiment with physical-digital collages that integrate photographs, paint, technical sketches, and sound. Collaging puts the formation of astrobiology—as a situated process, a becoming—at its center, allowing her to linger with the sensorial, speculative, and affective. Their crafting will contribute to the writing of an article that represents the core intellectual contribution of the book project and completing the book.