ACT 0: Fill the Cargo for the Red Planet

Lam Lai invites us to reimagine how society could be structured if we could start over on a faraway planet. ACT 0: Fill the Cargo for the Red Planet asks participants to negotiate which earthly values, experiences, and material culture will make it to the »Cargo List.« Through blockchain infrastructure enabling borderless participation at scale, the project becomes a theatrical gesture inviting us to think as planetary inhabitants, building a prototype for collective decision-making.

Lam Lai, Hong Kong, China / The Hague, Netherlands — Jan. 28, 2026

ACT 0: Fill the Cargo for the Red Planet © Lam Lai

ACT 0: Fill the Cargo for the Red Planet is a web-based participatory project exploring collective imagination and symbolic decision-making through blockchain infrastructure. Using the metaphor of preparing for Mars, it asks: What do we bring when we imagine a new world?

Participants submit short responses to curated prompts such as practices, systems, objects, or sensations they wish to preserve, discard, or reinvent. Each submission earns one token, which functions as verification of contribution and grants the right to vote on others’ submissions. Submissions reaching a vote threshold are added to the »Cargo List,« a collective archive of chosen futures.

The token system serves as a mechanism for participation, creating infrastructure for transparent governance. Token expiry, burn mechanics, and dynamic vote thresholds operate as encoded logic, establishing an immutable governance process. This explores how automated systems might enable new forms of collective decision-making.

The outcome includes a white paper detailing system logic and different blockchain implementation models addressing technical and economic feasibility, as well as interface prototypes for interaction and cargo list visualization. The project serves as a living prototype in which collective choices shape not only content, but also the system’s architecture itself, a form of participatory dramaturgy where system design becomes storytelling, and engagement becomes the stage.