Disobedient Stars

“Biddable, domesticated stars” is the phrase once used by the Scottish novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson to describe the gas lamps illuminating nineteenth-century London. The notion of ​​a night-time that has been tamed, as expressed in Stevenson’s formulation, encapsulated the modern era’s vision of progress, at the forefront of which was an avowed conquest of nature and efforts to bend natural phenomena to human purposes. The exhibition proposes an alternate perspective on the relationship between humanity and the cosmos. Here, the stars, seen as extraterrestrial phenomena beyond taming, resist being subjected to human intent and design. They prefer to disobey.

The advent of Western modernity was an epoch marked by the division of humankind from what came to be labeled “nature.” The rapid spread of artificial lighting allowed people to overcome the limitations of sunlight. Popularization of the clock and calendar impacted the very experience of time itself. Astrology, once adjacent to astronomy, was stripped of its status as legitimate science. The emergence of capitalism transformed every aspect of everyday life, from diets to the prelude to sleep.

The prevailing, present-day perception of nature-as-commodity is the result of developments in Europe between the 1600s and 1800s—a period catalyzed by the Scientific Revolution and culminating in the rise of industrial capitalism. Humankind has since continued to wall itself off not only from other forms of terrestrial life, but from the overarching cosmos. Contemporary culture has primarily depicted celestial bodies within the context of conquest and colonization. The exhibition unfolds as a visual essay; a search for an alternative imagery of the cosmos, conveying the influence of the celestial upon us, on our bodies, and on the surrounding environment. It is comprised of works by artists, spanning generations, examining the ramifications of the modern disenchanting of the world.

The works in the exhibition share a focus on extraterrestrial forces represented through phenomena such as the alternation between night and daytime, gravity, and oceanic tidal cycles. Some works reflect views of the firmament; others document experiments involving interactions between the corporeal and the cosmic. All seek to retrieve squandered knowledge predating the onset of industrialization—a knowledge needed today for the development of new awareness in the epoch of ecological catastrophe.

Sensory information:

Sensory-friendly hours: Thursday 5.00 pm – 8.00 pm

Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland from the Fund for the Promotion of Culture – a special-purpose state fund.