Epicycles (eclipse)

The work was born from the artist’s fascination with the Antikythera machine, an ancient mechanical calculator found off the coast of the island of Cerigotto in Greece in 1900. This sophisticated planetarium, capable of calculating the rising of the sun, the phases of the moon and the movements of the planets and much more, it testifies to the high level of technology and mechanics achieved by the ancient Greeks, which remained unmatched in medieval times. Berty Skuber built a series of images around the machine, which she perceived as close to the mechanism: as in a mosaic, in the video the remains of the shipwreck take shape, giving way to the machine corroded by the sea and therefore to its mechanisms and its numerology.

In the work, images of documentation and finds are combined with the artist’s graphic interventions – animated spirals, mandalas, collages, spots of color and fields of numbers. Through the myth, the symbol and the creative chaos of Berty Skuber, a poetic reactivation of the ancient machine thus takes place. The video Epicycles (eclipse) was conceived by the artist for the Lichtsicht Biennale of Bad Rothenfelde (Germany) in 2013 and was also screened as part of the second International Art Biennial of Casablanca (2014). A Museion was screened on 10 October 2015 on the occasion of the Eleventh Contemporary Day organized by AMACI and on 27 November 2015 during the Long Night of the Museums of Bolzano.