The earth turns without me

Grounded in intricate scientific calculations, yet humorous and contemplative, Christian Waldvogel’s installation The earth turns without me (2010) is a chronicle of his quest to briefly step away from the planet’s relentless rotation. The artist sought to cancel the Earth’s eastward motion by flying himself westward in an aircraft at an equal speed. The aim was to achieve a stationary state with respect to the Sun, and by converting the cockpit into a pinhole camera, to capture a four-minute static exposure of the sun as proof that the earth had indeed turned for a period without the artist.

The project was triggered by two light box images exhibited here. Earthstill, photographed by Waldvogel using an ordinary camera reveals the stars as streaks, blurred by the Earth’s motion. Starstill is a clear image of the stars, captured using an astronomer’s camera that cancels the Earth’s motion.

To replicate the second camera’s effect with respect to the Sun, the artist travelled in a supersonic Swiss Air Force plane flying west at the Earth’s rotational velocity (1158 km/hr in Switzerland). The resultant video of the Earth’s moving surface as the aircraft stood still next to it, a vitrine containing detailed documentation of the entire process and a positive of the exposed film revealing the Sun’s image not as a streak but a concentrated point, constitute Waldvogel’s multi-part installation.

To the artist, the act of resisting something as fundamental as planetary rotation is an allegory for the individual’s quest to resist social norms. The obstacles he encountered while pursuing this eccentric mission (it took him years just to convince the Swiss Air Force to cooperate) mirrors the artistic process itself, defined by the struggle to achieve a view of the world by stepping outside of it.