ephemeropteræ 2012/14 – Simon Starling, Mike Davies
Ephemeropteræ 2012/14 is the completion of TBA21's inaugural show at the Augarten, dedicated to the British artist cum explorer Simon Starling.
– Black Drop
So, while Reprototypes, Triangulations and Road Tests was on view in Vienna throughout the past months, Starling "completed" the show with a last work—the film Black Drop (2012) presented here in an Austrian premiere. The film tells the story of the relationship between astronomy, photography and the beginnings of moving image technology. Predicated on the idea that the 2012 transit may be the last to be recorded on celluloid (the next transit will occur in 2117), Black Drop tracks the development of the French astronomer, Jules Janssen’s innovative photographic revolver—a device that was designed to counter human error in timing the crucial moments of Venus’ contact with the edge of the sun, and was influential in the development of Étienne Jules Marey’s photographic rifle and the Lumière Brother’s cinematograph. The accompanying sculpture Venus Mirrors (05/06/2012, Hawaii & Tahiti Inverted), on show at the Augarten, consists of two large telescope mirrors that represent the 2012 transit of Venus as it was observed in June of this year from two historically significant observational sites in the Pacific Ocean.
Born in 1967 in Epsom, England, Simon Starling currently resides in Copenhagen, Denmark and teaches Fine Arts at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt, Germany. Among his recent solo exhibitions in public institutions are: Simon Starling, Kunsthal Charlottenborg; Recent History, Tate St. Ives; Project for a Masquerade (Hiroshima), Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; Recent History, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga; THEREHERETHENTHERE (Works 1997–2009), Musee DʼArt Contemporain Du Val-De-Marne (MAC/VAL) and Parc Saint Léger – Centre d'Art Contemporain; Inverted Retrograde Theme, USA (House for a Song Bird), Bass Museum of Art; Simon Starling: The Nanjing Particles, MASS MoCA
So, while Reprototypes, Triangulations and Road Tests was on view in Vienna throughout the past months, Starling "completed" the show with a last work—the film Black Drop (2012) presented here in an Austrian premiere. The film tells the story of the relationship between astronomy, photography and the beginnings of moving image technology. Predicated on the idea that the 2012 transit may be the last to be recorded on celluloid (the next transit will occur in 2117), Black Drop tracks the development of the French astronomer, Jules Janssen’s innovative photographic revolver—a device that was designed to counter human error in timing the crucial moments of Venus’ contact with the edge of the sun, and was influential in the development of Étienne Jules Marey’s photographic rifle and the Lumière Brother’s cinematograph. The accompanying sculpture Venus Mirrors (05/06/2012, Hawaii & Tahiti Inverted), on show at the Augarten, consists of two large telescope mirrors that represent the 2012 transit of Venus as it was observed in June of this year from two historically significant observational sites in the Pacific Ocean.
Born in 1967 in Epsom, England, Simon Starling currently resides in Copenhagen, Denmark and teaches Fine Arts at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt, Germany. Among his recent solo exhibitions in public institutions are: Simon Starling, Kunsthal Charlottenborg; Recent History, Tate St. Ives; Project for a Masquerade (Hiroshima), Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; Recent History, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga; THEREHERETHENTHERE (Works 1997–2009), Musee DʼArt Contemporain Du Val-De-Marne (MAC/VAL) and Parc Saint Léger – Centre d'Art Contemporain; Inverted Retrograde Theme, USA (House for a Song Bird), Bass Museum of Art; Simon Starling: The Nanjing Particles, MASS MoCA
Simon is joined by Mike Davies, master planner, architect and technologist, founding partner of Chrysalis and later of Richard Rogers Partnership, now Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners, who has worked on such projects as the Centre Pompidou and the Millennium Dome/O2, Terminal 5 Heathrow and Grand Paris. Davies is passionate about conceptual shifts, emergent technologies and systems from the nanoscale, through architecture and mezzo-environments to holistic city planning. He has been an amateur astronomer all his life, observing the sky and constructing a huge range of telescopes. Eclipse chasing has taken him all over the world, to those rare alignments and transits which continue to mark the march of time and history. During the wide-ranging discussion with Simon about film, astronomy and architecture, Davies discusses the topic of the atmosphere at eclipse times. He concludes by reading a text on the non-ephemeropteraic properties of the universe.
