October 22 - January 16, 2021
KU Leuven Library, Leuven, Belgium
“The Cosmologist’s Desk” stages the mundane from which we contemplate the universe- bringing together the human and cosmic scales.
The desk is looks out into the cone of time often used to represent the expansion of the universe from the moment of the big bang. It contains a fabric model of gravitational waves that reverberate through the universe since the dawn of time.
Here, the waves are amplified to effect everyday reality. As a wave passes a grandfather clock chimes, tea being poured from a pot flow backwards, and a chair balancing on the gravitational center of the earth quivers.
The monitor reveals that the entire setting is a green screen and the desk floats above our the milky way galaxy. Drawings by cosmologist Thomas Hertog represent the original formulation of the big bang.
The piece was commissioned for the exhibition To the Edge of Time, at the historic Library of KU Leuven, as part of the Bang Festival commemorating Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaître who introduced the theory of the big bang to Einstein. It was made with students from T-Campus Leuven and curated by Hannah Redler-Hawes.
