Michael John Whelan
Video Installation
Film
Photography
Objects
Paper & Sound
Info
News
The Reserve
AGGREGAT
Primary Organs
Exit Pupil
The Good Soil
From the Mountain
Exit Pupil
2019
2k video, 1.78:1, colour, sound
9:20 min
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Made in Bangalore over a year, 'Exit Pupil' looks at the diverse relationships that individuals and institutions have with the mechanics of astronomy, and how this can be connected to both personal and collective memory. Included are members of the Association of Bangalore Amateur Astronomers who build their own telescopes; damaged vintage footage from the Apollo 8 mission; planetary models in a science park; and a cold war era Zeiss telescope projecting sun spots. Throughout the film, subtitles intertwine an intimate narrative from the artists childhood memory connecting a traumatic experience with the beginnings of his love story with astronomy. The haunting soundscape is composed from a combination of ambient field recordings and stellar seismological recordings.