Department of English and Humanities arrange a seminar on Space Hauntings

The Department of English and Humanities at Brac University arranged a curious and exciting seminar on Monday, January 22, 2024, named  “Space Hauntings. Golden Records, Hope and Regrets in a Tender Time.” The seminar featured a stimulating lecture from Professor Bo Reimer(PhD), from the School of Arts and Communications, Malmo University. 

He also is the founding director of the Medea Lab, a transdisciplinary research institute under Malmo University that addresses cultural and social changes through experiments, installations, and interventions. Professor Reimer talked about one of the installations executed by the Medea Lab, called “Tender Time,” along with a discussion on the intriguing history and impacts of the Golden Record, a record containing sounds, pictures, and greetings from human race, on Voyager 1 spacecraft, which started its journey in 1977 and still is floating around in outer space. 

He speaks of their installation in detail, with its creation process with the inspiration from the Golden Record to their execution of the final exhibition in Venice, in 2023. Tender Time, Professor Reimer says, is a mixed-media experimentation, that explores the immersive experience of the journey of Voyager 1 spacecraft, with layers of human stories on regrets and sound effects of the Golden Record. 

The installation consists of a looped animation of the Voyager 1 floating in the vastness of space, with the sounds recorded on the Golden Record as humanity’s existence playing in the background, creating a hauntological aesthetic for the viewers. It makes itself a more interactive and immersive experience with the book of regrets, a book placed inside the installation that invites the audience to write down their regrets in life.

The seminar mainly featured Professor Reimer’s intriguing speech, which ended with a video recording of the “Tender Time” installation, and a question-answer session with the students and faculty. To add to the interactive experience of the installation as well as the seminar, the event concluded with students and teachers writing down their regrets in the “Book of Regret.”