Where the earth meets the sky
After half a century in the making, an observatory in New Mexico lets viewers peer 13,000 years into the future and the past - by Aeon Video Watch on Aeon
Charles Ross, a US land artist, has been constructing his monumental artwork, Star Axis, for half a century in a remote area of the New Mexico desert. This project, a 'granite pyramid' with a history spanning four decades, aims to depict celestial movement over 26,000 years. The observatory allows onlookers to observe Polaris, the North Star, gradually losing its fixed position in the night sky.
Director Rafael Salazar Moreno's documentary, Where the Earth Meets the Sky, documents this final phase of the project as Ross, who began sketching the idea in 1971 at the age of 30, now resides in his late 80s. The film weaves together archival footage and Moreno's treatment to explore profound themes about art's purpose and humanity's relationship with the cosmos within a compact runtime of 24 minutes.
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