Official selection of the Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, 19. – 23.11.2025
At the center of our galaxy, astronomers observe a massive point where so much matter is concentrated that no radiation seems to escape from it. Ian Purnell and Philine Rinnert address this blind spot in their work THE BLACK HOLE IMAGE: THE PICTURE BEHIND THE HOLE. They draw a line from astrophotography to the mapping of the starry sky to the seemingly unobservable corners of the universe.
They use this event horizon as a conceptual bridge. On one side are early glass photographic plates with their physical materiality, which captured celestial phenomena such as comets, stars, and solar eclipses. On the other side is the digital immateriality of contemporary image production, which makes visible phenomena that elude direct human perception.
“Now we know more about the limits of what we observe and can‘t observe.”
(Purnell/Rinnert)
Their installation subtly highlights fundamental questions about image production and perception. Using a projector and a mirror with a hole, the video image is fractured and reassembled. The installation illustrates that we can only recognize what is invisible to us through its effects on what we can see.
“Colours are assigned, shapes are filtered.” (Purnell/Rinnert)
Our aesthetic expectations of cosmic representations have been shaped by decades of science fiction and space photography. These images are products of interpretation – including from a technocratic perspective that focuses on data. The spectacular images of black holes are not “photographs” in the conventional sense, but translations of radiowave data into visual language. Mathematical algorithms become recognizable structures. These translation processes are anything but neutral. They follow aesthetic conventions that are culturally shaped. Thus, the unrepresentable is captured and domesticated by the filters of our visual world. THE BLACK HOLE IMAGE is a reflection on learning to see and makes the void in our visual perception visible.
the black hole image – the image behind the hole
multimedia installation, 2023
Installation concept: Ian Purnell and Philine Rinnert
Sound Design: Tim Gorinski
Supported by Connect residency, a programme of Arts at CERN and Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council, in collaboration with the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) and the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO). Additional thanks to Harry Enke, Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP).