Home & Away #6
The Cosmos

Old Observatory Leiden
Sterrenwachtlaan 11, 2311 GP Leiden
Tuesday 24 March, 18:45 – 22:30 H
Entry: 5,- euro
Please email eloise@westdenhaag.nl to secure a place, as it is limited to thirty people only.

We warmly welcome you to join us for Home & Away # 6: The Cosmos for a talk by the internationally acclaimed poet Lisa Robertson and a nighttime tour of the oldest observatory in The Netherlands.

As a program on travel and home, it only seems fitting that Home & Away explores the cosmos and our place within it, particularly when a one-way trip to Mars is a not such a distant possibility.

Home & Away #6 begins with a talk by Lisa based on her book Thinking Space published in 2013. In this book, she connects the work of Aby Warburg with the astronomer Johannes Kepler to think through ‘science as a relational query of the cosmos’. We will then explore the old observatory and look out onto the night sky through the observatory’s historic telescopes. If the night is clear we will gaze at the moon, the stars and the galaxies.

Lisa Robertson is known for working in book-length projects. Her subject matter includes political themes, such as gender and nation, as well as the problems of form and genre; she has written works that explore literary forms such as the pastoral, the epic, and the weather forecast. Her recent publications include: Cinema of The Present (2014), Thinking Space (2013), and Nilling (2012) among many others.

We will meet out the front of the observatory at 18.45. Kindly note that for this event there is a participation fee of 5 euros. For directions to the observatory please go to: http://bezoekers.leidenuniv.nl/locaties/sterrenwacht-observatori.html.

Home & Away is a thematic program series, which travels from West Den Haag to cities such as Perth, and Sao Paulo, to think about what it is to be away, or stay at home through the work of artists, musicians, poets, translators, academics, and performers.