The Abysses of the Scorching Sun, a reversed sundial

the-abysses-of-the-scorching-sunok

The sun has recently acquired a symbolic role as the frightening, inevitable, overheating agent in our challenging environmental future. Nicky Assmann’s “The Abysses of the Scorching Sun” is a kinetic installation with a light machine pointed towards the direction of the sun, whose trajectory is followed through a tracer. The machine’s light is reflected and diffracted, producing visuals similar to the “eye of a storm”. Like the shadow in a sundial, it moves imperceptibly, but its back projection seems, together with a drone soundtrack, to represent a desperate move to quickly impact what can’t be impacted: the force and effects of our planetary system’s star.

 

Nicky Assmann – The Abysses of the Scorching Sun