Action at a Distance

Related publication: http://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/programa-fisuras/polo-1/through-cloud.pdf

Polo’s project “Apparent Position” presented at the Museo Reina SofÌa emerged from research into expeditions undertaken in various parts of the world during the colonial era that sought to observe and document astronomical phenomena. At first glance, her work addresses issues related to the connection between scientific knowledge and the imperialist projects of the European powers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but Apparent position also gives rise to less immediate reflections and relations between events that seem to intersect at a given time and place, in the manner of an eclipse. The starting point is a historically and geographically verifiable event: Sir Arthur Eddington’s 1919 expedition to the island of Príncipe, a Portuguese colony in the Gulf of Guinea, to observe the effects of a total solar eclipse. This voyage, however, was not engraved in history with the epic dimensions of other expeditions of the colonial era. Although there are precise reports on the calculations and conclusions of the expedition, there are no photographic records of the experience. Only a stone stele mounted upon a whitewashed plinth at the approximate spot where the eclipse was observed reminds us that Eddington’s achievement signified the verification of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. It is here that the “apparent” nature referred to in the title makes its entrance. The purpose of Eddingto’s expedition was to confirm that light altered its linear course when in contact with a powerful gravitational field (like the sun), an aspect of the General Theory of Relativity demonstrable only during a solar eclipse. The position of the light of the stars is presumed to be “apparent”, and only a parenthesis in the astronomical processóa black eclipsed sun would allow that deceptive position to be photographed and the degree of deviation of the light to be calculated, an event of extraordinary scientific importance. And yet, in spite of the claims of the commemorative stele, Eddington’s expedition does not appear to have been the touchstone in the verification of Einstein’s theory. Later research indicates that its scientific results were rather poor, and although Eddington’s expedition “officially” legitimized the validity of the theory of relativity, such confirmation actually came only later. Polo’s proposal is presented in three formats: a 16-mm film transferred to digital video, photographs on glass, and a printed book. Apparent position makes no attempt to document or inform. It starts instead from a threefold position: the acknowledgement of a known fact; the awareness of the absence of precise historical documentation; and the intervention on site, which reveals not an alteration of reality but a way of framing new relationships with the surroundings and with history itself. We can imagine the tremendous mobilization of resources in any scientific undertaking rooted in imperialism. Its present-day parallel represented in the film is both evocative and eloquent. Local residents, operating according to their own organizational model and division of labor, rip an architectural element out of the ground and haul it off with chains and an unassuming truck. The projection shows the moment in the summer of 2011 when the stele commemorating Eddington’s achievement was moved at the artisartist’s suggestion, and with the support of the regional government of Príncipe, to the exact spot where, according to her research, the astronomical observation “apparently” took place. If Paloma Polo’s intention is to draw a historical parallel, it is a deliberately sterile one that is set up as a testimony to a loss. The film does not restrict itself to merely documenting the relocation of the stele and fixing it in time. Above all else, it concerns itself with the status of the audience and its position with regard to the experience it is witnessing. The viewer never comes to have a clear sense of the space or time. It is not made clear where the stele has gone, how much time it took. Time and space are alternatively suggested and disappear. Position emerges as the basis of the project: the position of the objects involved; that of the that of t sun and the moon; that of the viewer; and, ultimately, one of more complex articulation,the ideological “positioning” that might emerge from the whole. The position can thus relativize all the information obtained. That is what Einstein proposes in his revolutionary theory of space and time, the verification of which was sought by the expedition to the island of PrÌncipe. The new location of the commemorative stele just might alter the variables
from which the place and its history will be viewed from now on. Polo’s project, in turn, is not based on a hypothesis, nor does it try to restore a memorial or resignify a site.

Likes: 0

Viewed: