Tom Shakespeare: I love the way your project makes a connection to vaster expanses of space and time than our lives normally achieve. How do you think that people from other moments in space and time might have reacted to this work? I am thinking of the Aztecs or other ancient societies, for whom the movements of the heavens were more significant. Also the astrologers and others who saw mystic meaning in the movements of the planets.
Alec Finlay: Even in our own time we, as a society, have different ways of perceiving the stars: ways that the verbs suggest, gazing, studying, discovering. These terms define different eras, don't they? The contemporary scientist astronomer doesn't look at the stars with his eyes and some that I've spoken to wouldn’t necessarily be able to point out a particular star or constellation in the night sky. They look at space with the aid of computers and, just as important, they can look from beyond the earth, look into space from space, something no previous era could do.
You or I are more likely to be here on the earth, spotting familiar constellations on a night walk. The Star-Diary belongs to this era; what you could term the present-past era. I chose to concentrate on events or phenomena visible to the naked eye. It is a book for star gazers, not professional scientists. One practical reason is that there are detailed star calendars produced every year, for the following year. I wanted to telescope the project into time more than space, by covering a period of 100 years.
At one of the star camps I was chatting with an amateur astronomer who said he left his large expensive telescope at home, preferring to see what he could with his own eyes.
Our book is a calendar. All the events are facts; myth-making or futurology would have to be brought to it by the reader. On the other hand, it is not a book for the professional astronomer. Above all, this is a diary, a book that is planted into one person’s hands for life, for one hundred years. To repeat the point: it is a projection of the self into time, more than space.
Karl Jaspers describes our awareness of the stars as the beginning of all philosophy, because of this sense of self and otherness, space and time. This reminds me of how, when we were younger, people of my generation would work out what age they would be in the year 2000. I think unique star events give someone a clearer sense of the timeline of their lives – whether the reader considers these events prescient, magical, meaningful or just beautiful. If you step outside of the events of history, comets and eclipses are the single most common events that we share as a society. In that sense, the book is poetic and utopian, and I suppose that it does have characteristics that some ancient civilisations would have understood. They could certainly have made use of the blank pages.
TS: What process did you go through in devising the astronomical symbols? They seem partly astrological, partly like road signs. At first sight they seem complicated, but then you begin to understand the syntax.
AF: I knew that some symbols existed but then I discovered that other stars had no symbol. I was lucky that in my research I found a young amateur astronomer and designer in America, Denis Moskowitz, who had developed some new symbols. I invited him to collaborate and create symbols for each of the events included in the calendar. We wanted a visual language that readers could use to notate the events they saw, on the blank pages in the diary.
In the same way as Modernist poetry was given a new impetus through a poet like Ezra Pound or Paul Claudel being aware of the Chinese ideogram, or kanji Japanese haiku, I was drawn towards a system of symbols that are drawn and constellated, rather than numerical.
You're correct in saying that Denis referred to existing astrological and astronomical signs, and mythical figures, such as the hydra, and then applied a design logic to them. What the symbols helped me to do was create a map that is a calendar – a mapping of time, not space. The centrepiece of each page in the diary is a star-map which illustrates what happens each month. It has the appearance of space but represents time: the reader uses the symbols to find out what is happening on any particular date.
We could have summarised the entire book in a half dozen scientific tables, but that would have lost this poetic quality of the year being translated into a constellated map.
TS: The poetic element seems most important, but I feel it's useful also to educate people about astronomy: for example, the terms such as conjunction, occultation and even eclipse are technical and may be daunting to some people: will you include a glossary or explanation in the book? I'd like to think the diary will be used, rather than just noted and kept on a shelf as a symbolic object.
AF: Much of my work is made in collaboration: I am ever the amateur listening to and learning from professionals, and in a way the projects simply present that process. This project is no different. The calendar is being defined by Professor Ray Sharples (Durham University) and his short introduction explains each term, and, just as important, explains why we have included these star events and not others.
Again, the blank pages allow readers to take their own knowledge as far as they wish, from star gazing to complex calculations. It is a book for use, like any diary; an aide memoir, but also an invitation to reflect, learn, extend into a hobby, or translate a hobby into a skill, or even a profession.
TS: I relate to this collaborative element which is central to your work. You collaborate with experts, with technicians, and with your audiences. It feels as if you are the instigator or facilitator of work which you then float off into society, for others to engage with and work through. That's a very generous role for an artist, but it can also be quite self-effacing. You are very present in the conception, but in lesser ways in the execution or the final product. As a generalist myself, I sometimes wish I could claim expertise in one area. Does this ringmaster role ever frustrate you?
AF: I very rarely feel like a ringmaster; sometimes an instigator, a facilitator, a student, a mediator; sometimes an author, working with or without other authors. I used to try and theorise or formalise this aspect of my practice, for instance, wondering if the rather affected term animatore would be an accurate description. Nowadays though I just take each project as it comes and see these collaborative relationships as natural, functional and wonderful.
If I did try to describe the recurring process it would be as a line that arcs, from concept to realisation, passing through way stations. At some of these stations I am the one who reads the map; at others the map reader is someone else. The journey is always a circle back to my concept, which, being now realised in the real world, will turn out to be a new place.
The role that I have as an artist is the seeing and describing of these simple, often quite pure, concepts: for instance, a 100 year diary. I give astronomy back to the astronomers, but from a new point of view, combining their ability to apply a set of skills with my ability to re-contextualise or reframe their activity. Although one of my way stations is the science of astronomy, this re-routing steers the reader towards the temporal (and perhaps also an awareness of mortality), via the poetics of the act of stargazing.
Another aspect of this is that I do sometimes enjoy the labour involved in a project, if it lies within my skill set. At the beginning of this project I was looking forward to spending time transcribing the star events by hand myself. (There are 1500 in the book). In the end though the project did not allow the time and I couldn't summon the understanding. What did arise was the idea of designing symbols. You could say that I translated the act of note taking from myself and handed it over to everyone else. What's amusing in these projects is that I become one of the readers of my own book, much like any other reader – which is not something Martin Amis can say.
TS: One thing that depresses me about the modern era is that there is so much light pollution. For the majority of us who live in cities, towns or suburbs it's not often easy to see the stars . Do you think the Star-Diary will encourage people to resume the habit of looking upwards and outwards?
AF: The way the Observatory came about is encouraging. A small group of amateur astronomers began to meet at Kielder, because it has the lowest levels of light pollution in England. This grew into a series of amateur star camps; lovely affairs, with a small tent city and everyone comparing telescopes and stargazing stories. From this came the idea of an observatory, supported by Peter Sharpe and Kielder Partnership, which will be in the care of the astronomers. If you consider that this is essentially a huge plantation run by the Forestry Commission, and a Reservoir, it is a fascinating example of the diversification away from agriculture. The observatory is a very strong design, a contemporary building with a viewing platform and two small swivelling towers for the telescopes. Maybe this sketch from my renga word-map of Kielder is helpful here:
up on the hill mossy stones fish for stars the windmill howls like a banshee a shaped puzzle of fit pine plank walls holding an eye with four lids the two scopes are set on sunken concrete legs chamfered pine stobs pierce metal pins shaping an arc that swivels align yourself here on the buildings prow
There is an amusing story I heard that someone at a star camp covered over one of the street lights in the village at Kielder with a black bin liner, which didn't go down too well with some of the locals. The human cornea needs 20 minutes to fully adjust to the dark so as to see the constellations to maximum ability.
I think the book will encourage people to stargaze, because the blank pages ask to be filled with symbols – much as a stamp album asks to be filled with stamps. The events become something to collect. And, in the odd way that we often need a reason to go for a walk, the task of spotting this or that star will gift the reader the mystery and romance of a walk in the dark.
TS: I'm all for mystery and romance, but I want to avoid fluffy thinking. I always find it interesting that the names of constellations and planets reflect mythologies. Humans project their stories and gods into the cosmos, and then draw conclusions for their own lives from the movements and intersections of heavenly bodies. The very word 'heavens', reflects both the human notion of paradise and the more prosaic reality of boundless space. As a species, we want to find meaning in the infinite and relate it to our lives, to make sense of the cosmic and personal confusions we experience. As a rationalist, I don't think there is any ultimate meaning or correspondence in the universe, just the miracle of the laws of physics. I think the star diary seems to achieve the necessary balance of giving an external temporal and spatial measure for our lives – without assuming that there is anything meaningful going on. It's about achieving perspective, but not drawing dubious conclusions. Perhaps you disagree – after all, you're a poet!
AF: Meaning is multifarious. The notes in the book can be those of a child, an astronomer, an astrologer, a poet . . . I’m not going to call any of their conclusions ‘dubious’; nor am I imposing any single system of meaning.
As an artist I composed a point of view: time: measured through space. As a poet I composed the relationship between the calendar map and the blank page, which is one of potential – the possibility of someone, somewhere, seeing something. And I define the act as poetic, whatever use the reader puts the book to. Now, it seems to me, what I have written here suggests there are ‘correspondences’, though perhaps they are structured like a ratio, where the : is both a mark of relation and an identification of a separation. Astronomy is not astrology; astrology is not poetry. They can be related, they cannot be subsumed as categories. Undeniably they can all be used creatively, to bring potential meaning into someone’s life. That is as far as I will take the affront to your rational self; though I will admit that last big lunar eclipse made me feel very strange for a few hours!
TS: From time immemorial the skies have prompted poetic and spiritual reflection, and I appreciate the way that your blank page enables people to respond to what they see in any way they choose, just as your previous thought clouds were open to whatever ideas people brought to them. I do understand that many people use astrology or the I Ching or tarot as a form of structuring which enables them to achieve psychological insight, rather than as a literal source of meaning. But as someone who engages closely with science, I find it depressing that some people are prepared to believe all sorts of mumbo jumbo, setting aside rationality, evidence and argument in favour of superstition. I value wonder, but think scepticism is just as important! Maybe you'll respond by pointing out all that science does not know or cannot tell us. But I think that I want to dislodge anthropocentrism and make the point that we are trivial in the scheme of things. Your star diary does evidence that, because it documents events over a time and space which far exceeds the reach of humans.
AF: It is rather like a telescope isn’t it. The 100 years of the diary is like looking at someone on the other side of a valley: they seem so far away, but in terms of time and space 100 years is an infinitesimally small measure. They may as well be on the other side of the world, or on the moon, in terms of astronomy or cosmology.
I don’t try to extend my argument further than what the work itself actually shows or does. I mean that my art projects are how I figure out these what my own position is, and I find that I don’t come down on any one side, but rather I seem to want to allow the ratios of these different points of view to be revealed. My experience of the eclipse is something I am willing to admit, but the diary itself has to stay strictly within the realms of fact. It’ poetics is a poetics of reality.
The circle poem that I composed as a motto for the project reads:
here is space here is time
Which itself breaks down into a series of assertions or questions: here is space/here is time; is space here/is time here; space here is time/ time here is space. That is poetry as philosophy.
As I understand it, Wittgenstein seems to have been concerned with counterbalancing the predominance of the scientific point of view, without ever being willing to present any single alternative system in its place – or nothing beyond the totality of the world and the crucial importance human perception plays in how we experience this. The potential of the assembled facts the star-diary contains is, for me, an awareness of the immensity of space and, perhaps even more so, the glimmer of a sense of my place in time. To others the meaning will be different.
I chose not to make this point anywhere in the book, as it is personal to me, but what this time span makes me consider more than anything else is the ecology of the planet, in a Lovelockian sense. What will the planet be like in 100 years? The book extends beyond my lifetime. It may be solipsistic, but I think we all need tools like this, to imagine into the future. Contemporary politics and economics seems to depend on our not doing that.
Much of the information in the calendar was available 100 years ago, and the same information will be available in 100 years time, but our understanding of the universe, and our own environment, what will they be?
TS: that's a very interesting issue. There may be no one here to use the star diary in a century's time. We know the stars will be there, going through their motions for billions of years to come, just as they have been for billions of years. But human consciousness is a much more transitory thing, a blink in space time. It's the same feeling you get when you see the waves relentlessly coming in and the cycles of the tides. It inspires humility. But there's also possibility of humans having different understandings or perspectives in a century's time: there could be folks who are using the star diary from another vantage point - another planet or moon, or indeed a space ship at some other point in the solar system. A century ago, I think that the users of the star diary would have a not dissimilar experience to the contemporary user. After all, that's the moment when Einstein was formulating his ideas. But in future, who knows?
Tom Shakespeare is a researcher, writer and performer in both academic and cultural contexts. His interests include disability as a social issue; the relationship between science and society; and how art can promote enquiry and understanding. His books include Disability Rights and Wrongs, his performances include Falling and Laughing, Lump and No Small Inheritance.