Light Years from Here: TULCA Festival of Visual Arts- The Headless City

Light Years from Here’ by artist Aisling O’ Beirn is a project about looking at stars, telling stories about stars and thinking about the connection between time and stars. Cultures across the world have used the stars to tell the time, plan land use, navigation and speculate about the future. As all of the stars in the night sky are at different distances from the earth light takes different amounts of time to reach us. To look at the night sky is to look back in time to different pasts simultaneously. Depending on where we look we can see light ranging from the start of the Muslim Hijri calendar (622) to the launch of Sputnik (1957).The project ‘Light Years from Here’ involves a range of Galway residents from different ethnic / cultural backgrounds who contributed dates and related anecdotes that have political / historical or cultural significance.The Centre for Astronomy in NUI Galway helped to identify stars related to the dates to make up the ‘Light Years from Here’ star charts whilst The Galway Astronomy Club hosted the Light Years from Here stargazing event. With thanks for star contributions to: Albaset Dhanoon, Susana Campos, Philippa Maguire, Abhay Pandit, Matt Redman, Malcolm O’ Beirn, Roser Barceló Torta, Ludmila Snigireva, Elizabeth Power and Margaret O’ Riada, Galway Traveller MovementWith thanks to Ann Lyons, Community Knowledge Initiative, Institute for Lifecourse & Society, NUI, Galway,for her contacts and support. Dr Matt Redman, Centre for Astronomy, NUIG for finding stars, James Barrett & Albaset Dhanoon for 3D Universe Tour and Brian MacGarbhann, Galway Astronomy Club for the stargazing event.