Night Studio: Temporal Dislocations

A year-long durational project. Montage prints are created with multiple exposures from images of the night sky— our contemporary exposures combined with those from the Harvard Astronomical Plate Stacks (with permission)—made on the same day in history.

We are visual collaborating artists Ann Burke Daly (Conceptual Artist) + Marion Belanger (Lens Based Artist). We use found negatives and text interlaced with our own negatives and writing, in speculative narratives about non-linear time, climate change, weather, sleep states, historic women astronomers, shifting subjectivity, and collaboration itself. Our process for Night Studio: Temporal Dislocations, includes the gathering of historical documentation from the Harvard Observatory's Astronomical Photographic Glass Plate Collection for each day of the year. Our photographic prints are multiple exposure montages that include images made from those historic plates, some going as far back as the 1880’s—combined with images that we make of the night sky—merging our own contemporary exposures with those from the glass plates. Some we will intervene with reframing; marks, words from our co-journal, and painting with graphite and resin. The Harvard Glass Plate Collection have enthusiastically given us their blessings.

We are influenced by the life path of Vera Rubin, an astronomer seen as foremost in discovering evidence that verified the existence of dark matter, and in how she pursued her interests despite societal forces. We are equally motivated by the many Women Astronomical Computers who worked in the late 19th and early 20th century on the physics calculations, and visual records (the glass plates) of astronomical events documented through the Harvard and other telescopes. The proliferation of such numbers of women working in a crossover of stem and visual culture piqued our interest. The history of those women and their role in early astronomy is remarkable and under-acknowledged. In honor of their work, we title the large-scale photographs that we make after them. These are the spine of our work submission.

Another aspect of our process is the co-journal called “Weather Reports” where we write daily, with a notational approach pertaining to weather, sleep disturbances, dreams, daily occurrences, and other interests of this project. The “Harvard Computers” made notations and calculations directly upon the glass plates, with later calculations often added to the same plates by other generations of Women Computers. Our markings, often drawn from the co-journal, exist in dialogue with the women whose calculations are still pertinent to contemporary astronomy and our discovery and understanding of the stars.

Working with archives allows us explore how the past lives within our present. The amount of labor, printing, marking, writing, and touch that is required of us in this project connects us to our forbears who worked with the original astronomical glass plates whose alterred, transformed images we now access as digital negatives which we in turn alter and transform. There is in our activities, an intimacy and excessive amount of holding attention and touch —handwork— linking us to the “Women Astronomical Computers.”

The vast and expanding cosmos is where we direct ourselves in this moment which feels like an aporia for climate change, the environment, and all species. We find the smallness of the known universe astonishing.

*Collaborative Biography, September 2025

Daly and Belanger work with varied forms of documents including photographs, archives, sound, and video, in works that register place, time, shifting boundaries and liminality. They have been in dialogue for decades and have been part of a feminist collective that began after they earned their MFAs at Yale University in 1990. The Mycelium Project, their first foray into collaborative work as a duo, has advanced to the semi-finals of the 2026 Creative Capital Awards Competition. In this project they ask a global network of artists to use documents including voice, sound, and image—pertaining to place—as a vehicle for embodied reflection and collective creative acts around environmental concerns. Night Studio, their most recent collaboration involves collecting astronomical files of the night sky (with permission from the Harvard Astronomical Glass Plate Collection) to create montages with their own photographic images and notational writing. This work just earned a Hariban Awards 2025 Honorable Mention from the Benrido Atelier. Belanger is the author of Rift/Fault (Radius Books, 2016). She is a Guggenheim Fellow, and Urbanautica Institute Awardee. Daly is a Whitney Museum Independent Study Program Fellow and a 2024 NYSCA Award Winner. Her books include Drafts: Letters Unsent, Vol. XVII (Roman Nvmerals Books, 2016). They have attended residencies including Mass MoCA, Lost and Found Lab, Yaddo, MacDowell, and Millay. Their work is shown and collected internationally.

*Dimensions, Work Samples:

Night Studio: Temporal Dislocations is a year-long durational project of multiple works, exhibited as temporal segments. Two parts of the project are represented by our work samples (Obscure Traces, and 365 Days). Montage prints are created with multiple exposures from images of the night sky— our contemporary exposures combined with those from the Harvard Astronomical Plate Stacks (with permission)—made on the same day in history. Our process involves researching astronomical files of the night sky, and using these historical documents interlaced with our own photographic images and text, in speculative narratives about non-linear time, climate and weather, liminality, sleep disturbances, shifting subjectivity, and collaboration itself.

Night Studio: Temporal Dislocations (Obscure Traces) are large-scale photographic pigment prints 36" x 45" inches each.

Night Studio: Temporal Dislocations (365 Days) is a durational installation work comprised of photographic pigment prints the size of letters. The month of January can be 8 ft x 4 ft grid for example—one configuration. Daily prints from January, February, and March are included in the work samples in addition to a grid representing 31 days of January.

*Materials:

Digital pigment prints on photographic rag paper; found negatives (with permission, Harvard Astronomical Plate Stacks); Night Studio Daily Co-Journal (Weather Reports). Daily Astronomical Plate Digital Downloads for each day this year.