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Biennial science and art festival Funen, Denmark

IN A village on Denmark鈥檚 third-largest island, a group of astronomers, artists, performers and enthusiasts gather to celebrate the night sky, and to mourn its loss. Its remote location could have made it a tricky place to hold a festival to honour the heavens, but the village of T氓rup (population 290) is unique: its residents have chosen to have no street lights, making it an enclave of darkness.

It is a bad time to be a stargazer. Cities full of bright lights are constantly expanding, their stray glow making the stars more difficult to see, while the dazzling satellites littering Earth鈥檚 orbit do the same by reflecting sunlight back at our planet.

I am a guest at , which is an attempt to change all that. This is a new biennial science and art festival, held for the first time in September 2023 on the island of Funen. It aims to highlight what is being lost, pairing scientific talks explaining just how much we learn from the stars with artistic events offering an emotional counterpart.

One astronomer attending the festival was from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, who studies the chemistry of star-forming regions. She grew up in Greenland, where the stars and the northern lights were a constant. 鈥淭he stars have always been right there and visible, and I had a lot of questions,鈥� she says, adding that if she hadn鈥檛 been able to see those stars as a child, she might never have become an astronomer.

As Christensen talked, standing in one building of the converted pig farm where the festival was based, the sun began to set, ushering in a sky full of stars. Once the sun disappeared, the full moon made it difficult to discern some constellations. But the sheer number of stars was far greater than it would be near most of the world鈥檚 major cities.

Such views are becoming rare, and Christensen worries about what we are losing collectively. 鈥淟ooking up kind of triggers questions above ourselves. It鈥檚 sad that not a lot of people get to experience that,鈥� she says.

Things are changing, albeit slowly. had some good news from his native Norway, where he says building regulations must now take light pollution into account by, for example, facing street lights away from the sky. 鈥淭here鈥檚 an awareness about these things, because everybody likes to see the stars,鈥� he says.

There are also many global efforts to protect dark skies. For instance, the is a US non-profit organisation with thousands of members working globally to certify and protect areas that are optimal for stargazing.

At the festival, art installations and performances were hard at work using the night sky as inspiration. Artist Nanna Debois Buhl鈥檚 installation Stellar Spectra paired archival prints of 19th-century astronomer Margaret Huggins鈥檚 work on spectroscopy, with bands of colour typically produced by a prism, like red, blue, yellow and green.

In one old pig shed, I discovered an installation called Pigs in Space by HC Gilje. His work explored light鈥檚 relationship with shadow through a collection of pillars and moving lights, which cast a complex series of shadows on the shed wall. Though the festival鈥檚 juxtaposition of art and science could feel unrelated to dark skies, overall they were a refreshing complement. 鈥淚t鈥檚 absolutely intertwined,鈥� says Larsen. 鈥淚n science, you can鈥檛 go anywhere without imagination and fantasy.鈥�

Some events showed that close connection at work in other ways. Take South African film-maker Dane Dodds鈥檚 documentary , which had multiple screenings in a makeshift cinema in one of the old barns. The film follows the construction of some of the Square Kilometre Array telescopes, a constellation of nearly 200 dishes in one of South Africa鈥檚 remotest regions, aiming to reveal secrets about the first moments after the big bang.

But !AITSA (a South African exclamation of praise or surprise) is as concerned with the placing of those telescopes on the ancestral homeland of the Afrikaans-speaking descendants of the |Xam people. Dodds interviews them about their cultural traditions and attitudes about the night sky. It makes for a moving exploration of different systems of knowledge and meaning as international mega-projects collide with ancient traditions.

The closing moments of the film feature a performance of lithophones, sculpted sections of rock that produce wonderful sounds and harmonics when 鈥� and put me in a meditative mood. Having also heard how stars are born and revelling in cosmic dust, I was feeling spaced-out.

鈥淎 festival like this is quite absurd,鈥� says Larsen. 鈥淵ou know, we are out in the farmland in the countryside of Denmark. If you had asked people in Copenhagen, 鈥業s there any culture in Funen?鈥�, they would say, 鈥楴o, there鈥檚 just farmers鈥�. But here we are with avant-garde artists and scientists, together for a couple of days. Hopefully, having some beer and enjoying everything. Why not?鈥�

Each day, after the talks and performances were over, there was a stargazing session led by a professional astronomer. I couldn鈥檛 tell whether it was the stars, unfamiliar environment or the homemade cider, but, huddled around the campfire, a wave of sadness washed over me. How much longer would we be able to enjoy such truly dark skies?