An Installation at The KloHäuschen in Munich

The KloHäuschen is observing the stars.

I am inviting you to observe the stars and the heavens together with the KloHäuschen.

If you look through the North window of the KloHäuschen, almost in the direction of Polaris, you can see the stars. They are there, you just can’t always see them - there are clouds, and even when these are not there, there is that atmosphere. And even in a clear night in Munich, there are other lights, many of them. Thus, I brought you and The KloHäuschen an image of the stars, created far away from these lights, in the Nevada desert, Class 1 on the Bortle scale.

For this installation, for the view through the North window, the angle and rotation was adjusted to the location of The KloHäuschen and the time of the year and exactly our time we will be observing. It is an image with an overwhelming amount of stars, we barely can distinguish between the bright and the brightest stars. The infinity of the amount becomes clear, the futility of our attempt to see the universe, the everything, is obvious.

Once we are engaged in the mechanics of the heavens, we can’t deny that we have to honor the discovery leading to our modern view of the word, the discovery of the Jupiter moons by Galileo Galilei in 1610. It was finally the proof that not all objects are rotating around the earth. We are not the center, but we can participate and observe this wonder.

I brought this wonder now into the KloHäuschen with autonomous moving installations. We could view Jupiter and its moons to scale and in real time, we could observe the stars through the KloHäuschen’s little telescope, in just the right direction where the real stars are, and we could take in the phases of our Earth’s moon. It’s all there, ticking away.

There was also a large photograph of the stars, but now from the perspective of a rock, from an earthly perspective, exposed for almost six hours in a moonless night. The stars are depicted here as segments of circles, the mechanics of the heavens are apparent, we just have to be as patient as a rock.

So this installation is an invitation to be that rock, to watch the heavens from the perspective of the KloHäuschen and be together with the KloHäuschen now the center of the universe.