David Baumflek “Carte du Ciel”
chashama Gallery (461 W 126th St.)
This event has ended.
In 1887, the director of the Paris Observatory convened an international conference to discuss the possibilities that photography had created for astronomical exploration. The meeting ended with twenty of the world’s observatories agreeing to an ambitious project; the “Carte du Ciel” or map of the sky, a precise atlas of the heavens — of everything in the known universe. It was believed that the task would be completed in seven years. The project was officially halted, unfinished, eighty years and several hundreds of thousands of negatives later.
This project explores the fascinating history of this failed attempt to map the edges of the human knowledge. The story of the “Carte du Ciel” touches on the pivotal issues of the 20th and 21st century — from our relation to technology, the history of Colonialism, the mechanization of vision, World Wars, belief in science and the search to rationally contain the unknown.
About the Artist:
Baumflek’s work crosses genres to investigate the complex roles that memory, emotion, technology and politics play in human perception. In addition to video, his practice includes sculpture, installation, sound and performance. In recent projects, he focuses on the intersections of technology and aesthetics to explore the mysteries of both.
Media
Schedule
from June 20, 2014 to July 05, 2014
Gallery Hours: Thurs - Sat 12 - 6 pm; Sundays 1 - 5 pm
Opening Reception on 2014-06-20 from 17:00 to 20:00