Black Holes and «One Hundred Thousand Suns»

27. November 2025 Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rom

Seminar und Workshop von Eszter Poloniy, Lehrende der Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie / Gender Studies / kuratorische Praxis.

Vortragende: Dr. Eszter Polonyi, Dr. Sašo Grozdanov, and Rohini Devasher

In this interdisciplinary seminar, an artist, a historian and a physicist come together to explore how visual methods produce knowledge about astronomical phenomena.
How does the human observer approach the unseeable, the unknowable? In 2019, the iconic visualization of a black hole was released by the Event Horizon Telescope. This builds upon a long history of visual methods in observing celestial objects, from drawing to analog and digital photography. The seminar revolves around Dr. Eszter Polonyi and Dr. Sašo Grozdanov’s work on black holes and photography, and on Rohini Devasher’s artistic practice on portraying the Sun. We explore visual methodologies and interdisciplinary work processes – spanning art, physics, and history – through the lense of the astronomical image.