The New Show at the Hayden Planetarium project statement

In 2000, the Hayden Planetarium in New York City reopened its doors after an extensive three-year rennovation. The new planetarium, equipped with high-tech computers and staffed by ten astrophysicists, representated a shift in museum convention "to move exhibitions in a more creative way toward the edge of discovery," (Glanz, James "Quick Call the Astrophysicists..." New York Times, April 2000). The exhibition would incorporate up to date scientific findings, esablishing the planetarium as a space for the visualization of hard data. The first star show at the new planetarium, written by Ann Druyan and narrated by Tom Hanks, was called Passport to the Universe. In the year 2000 I was fifteen, and I went to see this show with my father.

The New Show at the Hayden Planetarium is a response to Passport to the Universe. Structured in three parts, this video explores the ways that planetariums operate as an apparatus for locating oneself in the world, and the psychological implications of that construction. In Donna Haraway's essay Situated Knowlegdes, she describes optics as "a politics of positioning." Instruments of vision have been "honed to perfection... to distance the kowing subject from everybody and everything in the interests of unfettered power." The planetarium produces a space of fantasy in which the viewer, positioned at the center of the visual field, is granted temporary access to "unfettered power."

This project refigures the planetarium as a coping mechanism. Tom Hanks insists that we are not the center of the universe, that we are essentially unlocatable in the vastness of space, and yet the planetarium offers the viewer a space in which they occupy a central position. The video draws attention to the mechanisms that produce this fantasy, including the paternal undertones of the narration and the architectural design of the theater. The New Show at the Hayden Planetarium explores the emotional undercurrents that the planetarium supresses in its recourse to scientific objectivity. Anxiety and uncertainty are the flip side of advancement.