To lift one’s eyes to the sky is to open our gaze to a territory that shapes our existence, as laden with meaning as the earth itself. Since the beginning of time, the relationship with the sky has accompanied human societies. Celestial cartographies, created both by ancient peoples and by contemporary communities, reveal subtle astronomical knowledge and tools for understanding the universe. They do not simply catalogue isolated stars: they trace mythological figures that belong to living cosmologies, intertwined with agriculture, rituals and journeys.Here, we seek to reconnect with the potential of constellations, as cartographies intimately bound up with our lives. They reveal the creativity and resilience that nourish processes of memory and peace across multiple geographies.Many constellations imagined in the past have not reached us. The 88 constellations currently recognised by astronomy stem largely from the Greek tradition; other names and mappings of the universe remain hidden. The frenzied pursuit of stellar conquest by technological industries inscribes other constellations in our firmament, composed of artificial satellites, which prevent us from seeing the stars and endanger our relationship with them. Disputes over the power of global elites are not confined to the earth; they extend to the universe as a whole. Pollution in the different layers of the atmosphere is increasing with the continual launches of these satellites — now numbering eleven thousand, of which eight thousand belong to a single company, Starlink. These constellations are not the ones we invoke here.

‍Making Constellations

‍To make constellations means to look at the sky attentively, allowing ourselves to be guided and illuminated by the stars. It is a relational act, through which we can imagine unions and conjunctions, and feel what these interactions awaken within us. Making constellations is to think, to perceive, to dream: to be reborn from one’s ashes by rekindling creative flames. To make constellations is to affirm life, in its most everyday dimensions and through our situated cultural practices. It is not an easy task: it is a work marked by uncertainties and questions. It is a continuous effort in motion, an attempt to grasp the complexities of the present in order to open horizons of the future. And while making constellations involves a personal commitment, it cannot be reduced to that alone: it calls for plural, solidaristic networks, oriented towards the common good, capable of weaving together experiences.To make constellations for plural peaces is an ethical and political wager, aiming to render visible experiences of peace that unfold at the very heart of the vertigo of wars and violence. These are stories of beauty and pain, of relations between humans and non-humans, between presences and absences, between the visible and the invisible. They are told through a plurality of languages: song, drawing, ritual and weaving.