Four years ago, Christian Waldvogel boarded a plane and flew westward at supersonic speed to shoot a video that succeeded in showing that the earth “turned for a while without me”.
Today, that unique four-minute aerial visual by the Swiss artist is wooing visitors at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB).
It was on March 17, 2010 that Zurich resident Waldvogel succeeded in his efforts to get into a Swiss Air Force (SAF) plane and move at a speed faster than the speed of sound at exactly 1,158 km per hour — the rotational velocity of the earth in his native country. He thus got to film the earth’s rotation while standing still with respect to the sun, said a press release.
Waldvogel’s ‘The Earth Turns Without Me’ is a four-part installation tuning into the core curatorial theme ‘Whorled Explorations’ of KMB in which artistic director Jitish Kallat has assembled works that allude to cosmology often referencing Kochi.
Kallat says he finds Waldvogel’s works “contemplative and sometimes even humorous”. They look at humanity from a distance and are “often grounded in intricate scientific calculations”, he adds.
To achieve his aim of remaining stationary vis-a-vis the sun, the artist converted the SAF plane’s rear cockpit into a pinhole camera that he would use to shoot the solar system’s central star. The project was triggered by two light-box images—Earthstill and Starstill, which Waldvogel shot and are also being exhibited at KMB’14. The first reveals stars as streaks because they are blurred by the earth’s motion, while the latter is a clear image of the stars using an astronomer’s camera that cancels the planet’s motion. Then, there is also the sun’s image displayed as a concentrated point.
The artist, who was born in Austin (USA), has a second work at KMB’14. Titled ‘Recently, the non-flat-earth paradigm’ is based on his “rediscovery” that for a person in Kochi, India’s northernmost point lies 125 km underneath the horizon — a fall that is equal to 15 times the height of the country’s tallest mountain range: the Himalayas.
Meanwhile, the organisers of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale informed in a communication that the exhibition would stay open from 10 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. “The organisers have decided to extend the time due to popular demand. Nearly 55,000 people have visited the Biennale since December 12,” said the press release.
