Historically observations made from the City Observatory on Calton Hill have re-shaped how we view and relate to the world around us. It is where astronomers observed and calculated accurate time, aiding ships docked in Leith to navigate and connecting Edinburgh to the world. It is also where the artist Robert Barker created the first panorama, expanding the pictorial field and horizon.
As custodians of this site, we are inspired by the history of ingenuity but we understand that narrative of progress is incomplete and complicated. Collective Observations is a series of online commissions which explore these complications, re-question the dominant narratives of the past, and consider them anew in our current social and political landscape.
In this film Dr Kirsten Carter McKee explores the history of Collective’s home in the City Observatory, which is intertwined with the art, architecture, politics and society of both Edinburgh and Scotland and their placement within the wider British Empire.
From the Observatory’s origins in 18th century and the desire to contrast wild Calton Hill with ‘picturesque’ architecture, to the playing out of Scotland’s Imperial aspirations, and as a focus for an emergent Scottish identity in the 20th century, the history of this unique place has continued to reflect both a local and global story. Revealing some of the many grand schemes for Calton Hill which were never realised, as well as exploring more recent artistic interventions and the arrival of Collective, Kirsten shows that, far from being a historical curiosity, the Hill continues to be an anchor in the landscape for the city and its people.
Dr Kirsten Carter McKee is a specialist in urban history and heritage and teaches at Edinburgh University, where she gained her PhD in 2013. Her work has engaged with the development of imperial landscapes, and her book on Calton Hill and the Third new Town (Birlinn 2018) addresses this from the perspective of Scotland’s role in Imperial expansion between the 18th and 20th centuries. Her current research expands this discourse around imperial landscapes in our urban realm to consider how we can be more inclusive in our narrative of trans-Atlantic slave trade and Empire in Scotland’s interpretation of its built environment.
Laura Yuile’s recent film work, Gated Community, commissioned by Collective Gallery during lockdown, examines how our homes became multi-functional spaces for work, care, self-improvement (or not), staying connected and imagining how our society might change. Filmed entirely from her flat, the work has a DIY aesthetic and uses TV Sitcom tropes to depict the life of its central characters.
Laura Yuile is an artist from Glasgow and currently based in London. She has exhibited internationally at venues including; Science Gallery (London); TACO! (London); nGbK (Berlin); Belvedere 21 (Vienna); Apexart (New York); Blackwood Gallery (Toronto); t-space (Milan); Recent Activity (Birmingham) and Generator (Dundee). She has undertaken residencies with; The Art House (Wakefield); ZK/U (Berlin); Temporary Art Platform (Beirut); and IOAM (Beijing). Laura participated in Collective’s Satellites Programme in 2014 and was an Associate Artist with Open School East in 2015. Alongside her gallery-based work, she has initiated a number of projects that intervene with the everyday, commercial spaces that her work is engaged with. This includes the podcast series ASSET ARREST, which takes a critical approach to financialised housing.
Nora O Murchú is the Artistic Director of transmediale festival in Berlin. As an independent curator, O Murchú has over a decade of experience in digital arts, curating exhibitions and events for institutions including Akademie Schloss Solitude, LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, The Science Gallery, and ZKM Karlsruhe. Notable exhibitions included Coded After Lovelace at Whitebox Gallery in New York and Land/Sea/Signal at Rua Red in Dublin. They have held positions as a research associate for the Interaction Design Centre at the University of Limerick, the Interaction Research Studio at Goldsmiths, and CRUMB at the University of Sunderland.
In the third film in our Collective Observations series, Dr Matjaz Vidmar explores the astronomical origins of Collective Gallery’s home in the City Observatory site on Calton Hill.
Matjaz begins from the premise that observatories are intensely political places, where power is derived from control of technology and knowledge. His short film charts the often-troubled course of development of astronomy in Edinburgh, from early attempts to establish an observatory on Calton Hill and the first telescopes installed by James and Thomas Short in the 1770s, to the activities of the Edinburgh Astronomical Society in the 20th century.
Matjaz pays homage to pioneers of science in Scotland who have contributed to this story, particularly those women whose achievements are not monumentalised on the Hill, such as Mary Somerville, Wilhelmina Fleming, and Mary Bruck. He celebrates the Calton Hill observatory as a symbol of a city dedicated to collaborative science, albeit a practical failure and, in the shadow of the National Monument, an example of the political hegemony Edinburgh’s elites.
Dr Matjaz Vidmar is a Lecturer in Engineering Management and is based in the Institute for Materials and Processes at the University of Edinburgh. His background is in physics and he is a specialist in astronomy, astronomical technology, space and satellite engineering, data processing and artificial intelligence. Matjaz is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Interplanetary Society.
For Collective Observations, Scott Rogers presented a single-channel video work, The Rowan Feeds the Blackbird, the Blackbird Sows the Rowan, focussing on the political and ecological implications of ‘mutualism’. Explored through the local environment of Collective Gallery’s home on Calton Hill. This new work presented the site as both subject and proof-of-concept for mutualistic forms of organisation.
‘Mutualism’ is a term drawn from biology and nature studies that describes relationships between different species where each share the benefits (including food, reproduction, protection etc) that occur from their connection. Considered more broadly mutualism makes the case for densely layered forms of reciprocity between species and offers an alternative narrative to those that construct nature as inherently competitive or aggressive.
Scott Rogers lives in Glasgow. His practice is focused on human encounters with nature, and the complex interdependencies that underpin them. He has recently presented work at the Kamias Triennial (Manila, PH), the Tetley (Leeds, UK), Hospitalfield (Arbroath, SCT), Gallery Malmo (Edinburgh, SCT), Aldea (Bergen, NO), Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop (SCT), Oracle (Berlin, DE), and Franz Kaka (Toronto, CA). He has upcoming projects with Untitled Art Society (Calgary, CA), and Haus Wien (AT).
Lisa Williams, author, poet, and founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association, explores the role that the City Observatory played in shipping to and from Leith. Now home to Collective Gallery, the City Observatory site has a long history as a crucial provider of accurate time to the city of Edinburgh and the Port of Leith. Time was kept by tracking celestial objects passing over the transit telescope which still sits in the Observatory today.
In her presentation, Lisa discusses the lives of the founding members of the Observatory and the development of mathematics and science, both of which were intertwined with the Transatlantic slave trade and buoyed up by colonial commerce.
Lisa Williams grew up in Dorset in a British-Grenadian family and after a childhood travelling around the world, moved to the Caribbean to run wellness programmes and cultural/educational exchanges for twenty years. After relocating to Edinburgh in 2011, she founded the Edinburgh Caribbean Association and now curates a range of arts events across Scotland to promote Caribbean culture, spanning film, art, literature and live music. She runs educational and anti-racist programmes in schools and universities and leads walking tours focusing on Edinburgh’s Black History. She is an author and poet, chairs and performs at literary festivals, and loves to teach creative writing to all ages. She has an MA in Arts, Festival and Cultural Management and is an Honorary Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh.
Acts of Observation was a group show by artists and writers Ana García Jácome, Jeda Pearl, Abi Palmer and Simon Yuill. The exhibition spanned our entire site and was presented as a series of solo presentations, or ‘acts’, throughout our different buildings, spaces, and online.
Dynamic in form and content, the artists brought together present a diverse range of works including film, interactive installation, writing and architectural interventions. Acts of Observation directly questioned, contextualised and challenged how we negotiate institutional language and spaces, and how disability is represented. The participating artists articulate and politicise notions of recovery and offer visions of positive, inclusive futures.
Acts of Observation took its title from Jeda’s new series of poems commissioned by Collective for the exhibition. Visitors were invited to contemplate Jeda’s work on the viewing terrace where they could hear readings of the poems whilst looking out to over Edinburgh, or enjoy them via the film on this page.
The works thought through acts of observation and where they intersect with the Black or brown disabled body, science, archeoastronomy and the sublime. The profound and brilliantly observed poems ask: How are we observed? How do we observe ourselves? Which bodies are seen as sublime?
Jeda Pearl is a writer based in Edinburgh whose work is inspired by the ‘in between’, plus the hidden history, culture, and folklore of her ancestral islands, her work often explores the intersections of identity, belonging, secrecy and survival.
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