The Time of the Stars is a site-specific sound installation created for the exhibition An Entangled Time Machine and installed in Galileo Galilei’s former study at Villa Galileo.
The work departs from the configuration of the night sky above Villa Galileo at the exact date and time of the exhibition opening. A recorded voice successively names the visible stars and, after each one, pronounces a year: these dates correspond to the moment when the light reaching Earth in 2023 departed from each star, calculated from its distance in light-years.
The installation unfolds the celestial vault as a coexistence of multiple temporalities: what kind of present is that of a night sky? What historical events, personal memories, and collective histories might a starry sky evoke?
Installed alongside YPJ–Jineology in the room where Galileo once observed and studied the stars, the work formed the concluding section of the exhibition, bringing together distant stars, political utopias, and collective histories within a shared field of temporal imagination.
Voice: Valeria D’Ambrosio
