Suggestions for Stargazing
Aisling O’Beirn
Waterworks Park, North Belfast
Suggestions for Stargazing is part of a long term research project called Right to the Night led by artist Aisling O’Beirn. Over the past 18 months, Aisling has engaged with astronomers, writers, environmentalists, council workers and residents of Belfast to draw attention to light pollution and advocating for darker skies.
For this trail at the Waterworks Park, Aisling poses a series of questions, prompts and instructions that encourage people to connect to the environment of the Waterworks park, look up to the night sky, and take civic action to reduce light pollution in their own neigbourhoods.
Suggestions for Stargazing is part of the Belfast 2024 celebrations and is generously supported by Belfast City Council. Project identify was developed by Shesaid Design. Right to the Night was originally developed as part of a BCC funded Community Takeovers project.
About the artist
Aisling O'Beirn’s sculptural work is concerned with exploring space as a physical structure and a political entity by making and animating forms relating to observed and theoretical structures being studied by contemporary astronomers and physicists. It is an extension of previous work on the politics of place, but still rooted in uncovering tensions between disparate forms of official and unofficial information. Previous projects have investigated ideas around entropy, order, disorder and balance and how laypersons try to understand scientific and mathematical ideas. O’ Beirn has exhibited nationally and internationally. She was included in Northern Ireland’s first participation in the 51st Venice Biennale. Her work manifests variously as sculpture, installation, animation and site-specific projects.