We are artist and amateur astronomer Rohini Devasher and sound artist Legion Seven. Since the beginning of 2020, we have been working on a project that uses astronomy to explore themes of observation and perception. The first body of this project was a live lecture performance called The Observatory, which began as an essay that revealed the complicated history of observational astronomy and was transformed into a multi-medial reading of the ways in which ‘seeing’ is strange and more ambiguous than one might imagine. The Observatory transformed the ordinarily immobile observatory into a fluid entity; guiding us past celestial bodies and through conjunctions of time, space, and event. It is with this momentum that we pursue The Observatory: Second Site, the second body of the collaboration.
The Observatory: Second Site does not seek to recreate or transmit the live body of The Observatory online. It takes advantage of what the digital makes possible, and opens avenues for a further fracturing of the body of this project. At the core of the work is the question of how perception impacts sight and transforms the object. We are interested in how our commentary on observation transforms when other artistic understandings of the question are assimilated into the body of the work.
Towards this we invited three creative practitioners to collaborate with us. Day Eve, Norwin Tharayil and Sona Shahani Shukla each created new works in response to the reflections of people who participated in The Night Sky Observation event, where they for the first time saw the skies through a telescope. These experiences of The Night Sky Observation are at the core of The Observatory project, and inspired the questions about perception that we continue to explore with The Observatory: Second Site – this time through the lens of our collaborators.
The Observatory: Second Site takes on the shape of a model planetary system. At the centre of this system is Saturn – host to the original lecture performance that began this work. Orbiting Saturn are three planetary bodies – the worlds of each collaborator which have become stars to traverse. Moons surround the system, each a reflection from the star gazing experiences that served as a prompt for the collaborators.
“Each one of us was looking through the telescope and checking what [we were] seeing by describing it in words, and between the 20 odd people it was as if we were conjuring that image. It made me think about what I saw from the telescope – how un-spectacular and bewitching it looked…how in looking at it the universe had to be acknowledged, and [the] thickness in between.” - Shveta Sarda
CURATOR BIOS
ROHINI DEVASHER
Photo Credit : Rohini Devasher
Devasher is an artist and an amateur astronomer. Her films, prints, sounds and drawings, map the complexities of time and space, through the twin frames of wonder and the strange.
Her work has been shown at the Open Data Institute London (2022), Rubin Museum, New York (2021-22), the Sea Art Festival, Busan (2021), Vienna Academy of Fine Art (2021), Goethe Institut Mumbai, the Kunst Leuven City Festival (2021) the 14th Sharjah Biennial (2019), Kaserne Basel (2019) Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) (2018), 7th Moscow Biennial (2017), the Spencer Museum of Art USA (2018,16), MAAT Museum of Art and Technology, Lisbon (2016), ZKM, Karsruhe (2016), Bhau Daji Lad City Museum in Mumbai (2016, 2018) Singapore Art and Science Museum (2016), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016), and the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial (2014), the Kochi Biennale (2012), among others.
Recent residencies include the Embedded Artist in Residence programme at the Open Data Institute (ODI) London 2021-22 and the Cove Park Fully Funded Artist-in-Residence programme 2022-23 with the City as a Spaceship Collective.
Current projects include One Hundred Thousand Suns, a four channel film that explores the relationships between observation, information, data and truth, commissioned by Data as Culture (DaC) the art programme of the Open Data Institute (ODI), London.
Devasher has been selected for Connect India and will participate in a dual residency at CERN in Geneva and at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR)ICTS in Bengaluru in 2023.
LEGION SEVEN
Photo credit: Daria Kolacka
Legion Seven (*1993 in Brampton, CAN) is an artist whose work is an erratic vehicle on a splendid path. Their projects emerge in bodies as diverse as the imagination; consistent only in a refractive departure from the literal cult rigidity into which Seven was born. The wreckage of this rigidity, strewn with dream-mythology, science-fiction, chaos-logic and exuberant lies, drapes the path wherewith Seven gains momentum and puts momentum on display.
In the near decade that Seven spent in Basel (CH), they enriched the city’s art and music culture through projects across a wide range of disciplines: from full concept bands and minimal duos, to character based immersive performances. Seven was awarded the Basler Medienkunstpreis (Basel Media Arts Prize) for their live audio-visual storytelling collaboration The Several Ways I’ve Died In My Imagination. That following year, they were recognised individually by the Cultural Department of Basel-Stadt for their overall artistic contributions, and awarded with the city’s Kulturförderpreis (Cultural Promotion Award) of 2019.
In early 2021, commitment to an intensive restructuring of their artistic practice led Seven from Basel to Berlin (DE). There they cocooned in the belly of the lockdown, developing a new body for the respiration of their work. In 2022, the initial breaths of that body took on the form of poetic lecture performances written especially for and in dialogue with the exhibitions that staged them. A composition for Evan Ifekoya’s Resonant Frequencies at The Migros Museum of Contemporary Art (CH), and for Frida Orupabo’s I have seen a million pictures of my face and still I have no idea at Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH), are among these commissioned works.
COLLABORATOR BIOS
Photo Credit : N. Iroh
DAY EVE KOMET - Artist
Day Eve M Komet is an artist, writer, poet, performer, filmmaker and designer. They are an experimental space maker from London that resides in liminal space. Their current energy consists in expanding their brainchild Audioslut.com: an intergalactic universe, which jumps and explores rabbit holes into other dimensions. Their background in philosophy and anthropology means that they have a distinctive style and mode of presenting their work.
The main aim in all their artistic pursuits is to allow audiences and themselves to look at the world through infinite perspectives. As a writer and filmmaker they insist on engaging with the surrealism of life with fervour and colour.
Their work has been shown at Cambridge Film Festival and Berwick Film & Media and Arts Festival. Their interactive world making experiences have been exhibited and experienced as part of the Wienoche Art festival (My Skin is…2020) and SHIFT (My Servant’s Master 2021) in Vienna. They engage deeply with the understanding that collective healing and decolonial imaginative practices are necessary to continue and sustain life on planet Earth.
Reflections from the artist on their process for this work:
"...you have to unlearn rapidly what you have seen before to even make it intelligible. So what happens is there is a search for language; you have to unpack your unseeing of the world"
- Jeebesh Bagchi
I found this prompt to be very insightful, in regards to my own way of interacting with the world. I believe that we must destroy worlds in order to know what they are made of - healing as creative destruction. In this process, you may become 'intelligible' however on the other side, you may find another way of seeing that brings growth and new possibilities. This is what STEVE is and this is how I created a realm and a way of communication that is ambiguous as it is sincere. The confusion you feel in Prisms of Peculiarity is what it feels like to be in TIME, and I wanted to purposefully create a space that makes you "unpack your unseeing of the world"
Photo Credit : Sona Shahani
SONA SHAHANI SHUKLA - Artist
An entrepreneur by profession, Sona Shukla is passionate about astronomy and has pursued it as a hobby actively since 2018. The mother of two teenage kids, she lives in Delhi and does all her planetary imaging from a small balcony facing South East. Sona started astrophotography using a smartphone, gradually moving to an astro dedicated camera in August 2020.
Reflections from the artist on their process for this work:
This project was a delight as it was so aligned with my work. The prompts were the first concrete evidence of how tuned in this [project] was to what I was already doing: imaging the cosmos and celestial bodies of our solar system. My process of imaging wasn't just limited to the technical aspect of it, I was able to share my own perspective, emotions and memories when I capture these timeless beings. This brought out my eternal love for the planets, how I see them and my own interpretation.
So a big thank you to Rohini & Seven for having me onboard this beautiful journey.
Photo Credit : Norwin Tharayil
NORWIN THARAYIL - Artist
Norwin Tharayil studied German philology, history and literary writing in Basel and Hildesheim. They write poetry and prose and are also a performer. Their literary audio piece Im Halbschlaf träumte ich vom Ende der Nacht, a collaboration with their brother Ralph Tharayil, explores the meaning of sleep in face of 21st century conditions, and was aired on SRF2 Kultur. The audio piece Are You Feeling Better Now? - A guided meditation, developed with sound artist Jascha Dormann, which critically questions the prevalence of meditation apps in Western performance-based societies, was shown at the Prosanova Literaturfestival 2020. In co-production with Kaserne Basel, they created the dance performance Keshava/Tharayil together with Ralph Tharayil and the dancers Anjali and Sumitra Keshava, which premiered in June 2021. They also publish music under the moniker ELFRID THE THIRD; their debut album A Case of Paranoia is set to be released later this year. Norwin lives in Berlin.
Reflections from the artist on their process for this work:
I was able to see the first edition of The Observatory at Kaserne Basel, and upon reading the prompt I was reminded of the many thoughts the lecture performance had stirred on the ways we observe and how our observation is at all times mitigated. I was also reminiscing about the conversations I’ve had with Seven on how this circumstance relates to our perception of different bodies, specifically the ones that were “discovered” by the West during the process of Colonization, bodies that were in turn named and described by modern Western (pseudo) sciences with the tool of language. To think that language, neither static nor objective, was not impacted by the discourse that invented the “other bodies” seems delusive. The West’s highly ambitious and violent endeavor to include the entire globe in the Enlightenment’s overexposure has impacted the language and the associations we continuously operate with to conceptualize regions, to speak of a body.
Whilst picturing myself looking into the night sky, at an astral object cloaked in darkness, I was immediately inclined to switch positions, to write from the perspective of not the observing subject but the observed object, the body that all the words and ascriptions fall upon to force it into the light. I thought about the model, meaning the collective discursive expectations that the resting body is measured against. I started writing poems as well as an abstract fantasy about the existence of a body in darkness. I appropriated and slightly adjusted definitions of the word “model”. All of these I collaged into a cry that hopefully conveys the somewhat naive longing for the impossible: to exist and be seen on one’s own terms.
Photo Credit : Hiren Kangad
HIREN KANGAD - Website Experience Developer
Hiren Kangad is a multimedia artist with a focus on interactive technologies, and a strong background in coding and design. He completed his B.Techdegree from DA-IICT in 2013, and later attended the Interactive Media Arts Low Residency MA program through NYU - Tisch in 2022.
With over 9 years of experience in the field, Hiren has cultivated a wide and comprehensive set of skills that has made it possible for him to work with clients across a range of industries. Among these clients are the popular streaming service Voot Select, India’s largest fashion event Lakme Fashion Week, and the acclaimed musicians/composers Amit Trivedi and Arijit Singh.
A coder from the heart – for Hiren, creating memorable experiences through playful and unconventional ideas is the most rewarding part of his practice. Through these interactive experiences, he leaves a lasting impression on his audience.
PROJECT CREDITS
The Observatory - Second Site was commissioned by Khoj, supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, and curated by Rohini Devasher and Legion Seven.
This website was designed by Rohini Devasher and Legion Seven in collaboration with Hiren Kangad, who designed and programmed the website experience. The illustrations of the Planisphere and Orrery are the work of Rohini Devasher. The curators thank Sijya Gupta for design inputs in the early stages of the project.
Our invited artists are: Day Eve Komet, Sona Shahani Shukla, and Norwin Tharayil.
Part of the research for this piece was made possible as part of Five Million Incidents, 2019-2020 supported by Goethe Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan in collaboration with Raqs Media Collective.
This work would not have been possible without the support of Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and Khoj.
We would like to thank Akshay Pathak, Aman, Tanima at Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, as well as Pooja Sood and Indranjan Banerjee at Khoj for inviting us to expand the project to this digital platform.
We would especially like to thank Indranjan Banerjee of Khoj for his enthusiastic belief in the work and attentiveness in overseeing the project.
A very special thanks to Kadiatou Diallo whose catalysing invitation brought us together for the first iteration of the project in 2020.
The background image of this page is a photo taken by Sona Shahani Shukla of the occultation of Mars by the Moon in 2019.
The intro theme music for this website was written and produced by Legion Seven
CONTENT CREDITS
To Drag A Carcass Through The Night Sky - Norwin Tharayil
Written, performed, recorded and produced by Norwin Tharayil Video editing and production by Rohini Devasher (2022)
Prisms of Peculiarity - Day Eve Komet
Written and performed by Day Eve Komet Animation by May Britt Franzen and Alexandra Mirzoyan Music and Sound by Day Eve Komet
Personal Diaries of a Planetary Theatre - Sona Shahani Shukla
All images photographed and processed by Sona Shahani Shukla Text by Sona Shahani Shukla, edited by Legion Seven Audio production by Legion Seven
Saturn’s Second Arrival - Legion Seven
Written, performed, recorded and produced by Legion Seven Lyrics inspired by and adapted from the reflections of Jeebesh Bagchi Video editing and production by Rohini Devasher (2020)
“I believe that we must destroy worlds in order to know what they are made of – healing as creative destruction... The confusion you feel in Prisms of Peculiarity is what it feels like to be in TIME, and I wanted to purposefully create a space that makes you ‘unpack your unseeing of the world’"
“My process of imaging [isn't] just limited to the technical aspect… I [am] able to share my own perspective, emotions and memories when I capture these timeless beings, [and] bring out my eternal love for the planets.”
“Whilst picturing myself looking into the night sky – at an astral object cloaked in darkness – I was immediately inclined to switch positions; to write from the perspective of not the observing subject but the observed object, the body that all the words and ascriptions fall upon to force it into the light.”
(amateur astronomer and curator of The Night Sky Observation)
“There is a strange juxtaposition of the virtual and the real. Hubble and its marvelous images have found their way into everyone’s lives and taken up places in our imaginations. Entities have been assigned form, shape, and so, meaning. But the experience in the field, with a telescope or binoculars is very different. I once asked an amateur astronomer how he deals with the anxieties and false expectations that often accompany a first time observation – that moment of ‘is that all?’ His answer was that, ‘you have to remind them of where they are and of what they are seeing - that the light of that star has traveled that far before pinching the light receptive photons in your eye. As an experience, it is visceral, it is ‘real’ and it is uniquely yours.”
Reflections of Ajay Talwar
(amateur astronomer and curator of The Night Sky Observation)
“A common misunderstanding is that when you observe visually, the experience is limited to yourself, and when you pursue astrophotography, you can share the result with the world.
Astrophotography shows you what you cannot see: colours of nebulae, faint details on planets. But not many people have experienced an observation with a large telescope on a mountain peak. Take a 20-inch telescope to Hatu peak and observe visually – you will forget astrophotography, and remember the sight through the eyepiece forever.”
Reflections of Shveta Sarda
(participant of The Night Sky Observation)
“Some of my favourite moments were when each one of us was looking throughthe telescope and checking what s/he was seeing by describing it in words, andbetween the 20 odd people it was as if we were conjuring that image. It mademe think about what I saw from the telescope. How unspectacular andbewitching it looked. How far away, how in looking at it the universe had to beacknowledged, and its thickness in between. The telescope helped us seesomething so far, but doesn’t bring it close. That night wasn't just an event, buta thought incident.”
Reflections of Sabih Ahmed
(participant of The Night Sky Observation)
“The practice of observation reminds us that seeing is never unmediated. The technologies and techniques through which we see produce a fantasy of unmediated seeing, as if there is a form of experience that is somehow more real, instinctive or natural if those technologies were put aside. The question of whether or not our experience of the world can be unmediated is fundamental to larger questions of what it means to be human. It raises questions about whether human experience can ever be purely biological, when everything we know about the world and the universe is only through techniques of observation. How else would we even know what we are seeing?
The images of ... the stars forming through the telescope that night almost felt delicate. It is hard to imagine that those giant planets would tremble with every little motion of your eye, and flicker almost like low-resolution gifs. After Saros132, I am unable to see gifs the same way again. I am convinced that all the gifs in the world right now are possibly signals from millions of light years away.”
Reflections of Jeebesh Bagchi
(participant of The Night Sky Observation)
“That object ... or what we thought “[it] was, as known through models, photographs, etc., is not the [object] we saw. What happens in a kind of opening in your head – ... what you are seeing with this technology, this telescope, is what Galileo saw, what hundreds and thousands of amateur astronomer have seen, [and] is something that will appear for you if you untrain your mind of the way you have been trained to see [it]. It’s a very circular way. I am going to see [this planet] because I have been mobilised to see [it], because I have seen amazing images of its [features] etc. What we saw, that quiet little object in the sky, the time horizon of it – to even think about 1 billion kilometers is a bit complicated – you have to unlearn rapidly what you have seen before to even make it intelligible. So what happens is there is a search for language; you have to unpack your unseeing of the world, and you have to make intelligible what you saw, which as an experience was very frugal.
It is not a loss for words; it is a search for words. So there is a silencing and a search for words. I think a lot of art appears like that. Art appears in that intersection, when your comfort of having seen the world is withdrawn, and something appears which may not be awe, which may be a bit uncanny, something which is not very sure of its object-ness. And then it reappears! That intersection, that is where we search the [word]. That is where if I have to communicate to you, I can’t take you to see [this planet] but I have to be able to communicate to you the power of [its] presence ... I have to communicate it to my friends, my lover, my students, whomever I meet. To share this experience that is very unique and which is searching for speech. So this gap, this is the gap in which most artistic practice stays.
We have a world of objects which are a threat, which are precious, which are inertial, which can be taken away from you. There are a lot of forces around it. But there is also the world of objects we inhabit – which is generous in a way –which have a life, that have a caring to them.”
The Observatory
Rohini Devasher & Legion Seven
The Observatory: Second Site is the first satellite of an expanding project. The original body of this project was a live, multi-medial lecture performance called The Observatory. In The Observatory, the trajectory of Saturn’s first observations to its contemporary renderings was unpacked to reveal the complexities of observational astronomy, and the ways in which ‘seeing’ is strange, wondrous, and more ambiguous than one might imagine.
The Observatory: Second Site is host to worlds that fracture, expand and evolve this reading, but here in Saturn can be found the original content of The Observatory – transformed in its form and presentation once more.
Designed to chart the night sky, a planisphere is an ancient instrument of observation and navigation. Transposing both the analogue tool and physical live performance, our Planisphere is the means by which we chart and traverse the online incarnation of The Observatory.
