My recent visit to Berlin for a planetary science conference coincided with . The exhibitions were mostly light years away from space and planets, but, to my surprise, some were scientific.
Take exhibition Borrowed Light, an intriguing exploration of astronomy. Its centrepiece, One Hundred Thousand Suns (pictured above), was a four-screen video installation drawing on Devasher’s time at Kodaikanal Solar Observatory in southern India. Interviews with the astronomers on the deep meaning they found in experiencing eclipses were particularly moving.
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I also visited a photo exhibition called , by Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld. Her work focuses on the chemicals involved in being female, with psychedelic-tinged microscope images of hormones, such as progesterone or oestrogen, on prints hung around a white room (we had to don lab-like shoe covers). Faint, throbbing techno in the background completed this eerie experience.
