Into the Black Hole with Jonathan Zackor
The Valkhof Museum’s exhibition ‘Into the Black Hole’ opened in October of 2023, to much fanfare. Students from Radboud University (such as our very own Laura Schranz!) participated as ‘public-in-residence’ to co-design the exhibition alongside the Valkhof museum. I decided to interview Jonathan Zackor, a Master’s student in Tourism and Culture at Radboud, who was part of the core group of students working on the exhibition. I had a strategic advantage in scheduling an interview with him, owing to the fact that we have been boyfriends for almost a year and a half.
I decide to spring a surprise interview on Jonathan during his shift at the coffee corner in the main University Library. He is wearing his black work polo shirt and a pair of comfortable-looking jeans, but his individuality is still obvious even through his uniform: his split-dyed hair (currently half-brown, half-orange), the tattoos on his arm and his nose piercings make him easy to spot. He is softly spoken, switching between English and Dutch to take people’s coffee orders, and apologetically defaulting back to English with a smile if someone tries to order using unfamiliar Dutch slang. In a quiet moment, I ask my first question:
For the uninitiated, who are you, and what was your role in the Valkhof Museum exhibition ‘Into the Black Hole’?
“I’m Jonathan Zackor, I’m an international student from Germany who is doing his Master’s in Tourism and Culture. While I was working at the Valkhof Museum, I was still doing my Bachelor’s degree in Arts and Culture Studies, so my Master’s orientation coincided with the work I was doing at Valkhof. I was hired by the Valkhof Museum, as a Radboud student, particularly as a student who could participate in giving a unique perspective on the collaboration between art and science.”
He leans over to look at what I have written down so far, then asks, “Could you add that I was selected to be a member of the core group, not the senate?”
On the topic of unique perspectives, I ask him if he noticed a difference in approach or mindset between him and students from different faculties. He begins to answer, but is interrupted by an influx of customers to the coffee corner. He diligently switches to taking people’s orders, and once the rush dies down, he returns.
“A difference? Well, yes… I think a difference was already reflected in my motivation when I applied for this position. They were asking what our opinion about the black hole was, what initial thoughts we had about it. I told them that I wanted to become an academic researcher, that I’ve done some independent research on it already, and that I’ve done some independent research on Affect studies – with an A!”
At this point, something shifts: Jonathan is no longer just chatting during his work shift, cleaning Billie cups and keeping an eye out for customers – he embodies an academic, a professor giving a lecture on cultural studies (one I am struggling to capture the true depth of in my hastily-typed notes).
“In my opinion, the phenomenon of the black hole is extremely challenging to grasp, so I attached some thoughts to it that were inspired by my previous research, such as imagining the black hole as a void with all emotions absent, with all humanness absent. So I was considering the black hole from a Culture-studies’ perspective. I was not the only person working on the exhibition from the Faculty of Arts, obviously, but I was very willing to stand in for the initial idea that I had.”
“I think the perspective I have is also important for people who don’t know anything about black holes. Like, I didn’t know anything about the scientific side, I think most people probably don’t. In antiquity, people came up with Greek gods to try to understand the phenomena around themselves that were beyond understanding, and I think the black hole represents something similar.”
“In my studies, we are taught to be extremely critical. Our study is very theoretical, so I thought it was very different…”
Jonathan dashes away for a moment to retrieve some returned Billie cups from customers, puts them in the sink, then makes his way back over to me.
“…I feel like other studies from the Faculty of Arts might have more practical applications, like studying languages, but with Arts and Culture Studies, it may be a stereotype, but you can’t really do anything with it if you don’t have more education, like in a job. You know what I mean?”
I am a PPS student; naturally, I do.
So, being an Arts and Culture student, you’re used to having to deal with more abstract ideas that aren’t tangible. You’re used to studying things that can’t necessarily be understood, like a black hole.
“Oh… you put that much better than I did.” Jonathan half-sighs, half-chuckles.
What does the exhibition mean to you, firstly as Jonathan the Arts and Culture scholar, and secondly as Jonathan the individual?
“As a scholar, it means a successful combination of art and science perspectives.”
He doesn’t elaborate, so I nudge him:
And what about Jonathan, the individual?
He smiles, this question is more difficult. After thinking for a moment, he says: “I think one major component of the exhibition was that it was co-designed with students my age, and I think it’s quite an honour to be part of this. I think that the exhibition really thrives off of that as well, because you can hear the contemporary voices. That’s very cool. Like it’s very… in the moment, completely recent. It speaks for our generation.”
You were talking about Affect earlier; how do you feel when you’re in the exhibition?
“I feel fascinated by all of the voices that come together. It’s a very overwhelming experience. It leaves me in awe. It makes you wonder why museums don’t work with students more often.”
What do you think a student from the FFTR could learn from a visit to the exhibition?
“People can have different conceptions, theories, “scientific theories”…” (Jonathan mimes the quotation marks for “scientific theories” with his hands, half-mockingly, with the air of someone who has several strong opinions on the separation of scientific theory from cultural theory), “…but they can express them in artworks as opposed to in writing. In philosophy, I feel as though writing is the primary way of expressing and learning ideas and theories. In the exhibition, philosophy students could try to retrace the objects, and try to see what theories the objects might incorporate or represent. Obviously the written descriptions of the artworks on the plaques help people to interpret the work…”
Jonathan hesitates for a moment to gather his thoughts, then confides in me: “If the museum wants to work with students and take them seriously, I think a point of improvement in the future would be for them not to pick and choose from our ideas as it suits them or the status quo.”
I detect some frustration and, in the spirit of journalism, I resolve to delve deeper, devising a new question while Jonathan finishes his shift.
Were there things that the senate or the core group had suggested, but weren’t able to implement in the final exhibition?
“Since I was a member of the core group, we weren’t part of a lot of conversations that the senate had. So I can’t really say anything about that. But we, as a core group, were each given additional specific focuses. One idea we had was contrary to what museums usually do – we wanted to not print dates on objects we were exhibiting. There are a lot of objects in the vitrines and exhibition space such as the mobile telephone, prints, books from Radboud’s special collection… Using these objects, we wanted to give a comprehensive overview of people from different cultures and different time periods gazing into the stars and making art about it, or wanting to explore what’s waiting for them in the universe, and inventing technologies to do so. This is a cross-cultural thing, and we wanted the visitor to think for themselves about what connects different cultures, in spite of temporal differences. So we were thinking about just completely removing the data and locations of objects from the objects themselves, to not have the dates printed in the object descriptions.”
“We wanted to do away with museum traditions. The students had visions for how we could change things, and this was brought up in conversation. But I think this, and other ideas, were sometimes too progressive, I guess, in the museum’s eyes. ‘This is not how we do it here’, basically. So those ideas from the students were put to the side, I feel, because they were so out of the way of traditions. But we weren’t really told that this was something we couldn’t give input on.”
“There was also an issue with language. We were a mix of Dutch and international students, and one of the museum’s missions with the exhibition was to attract more students, which was why they wanted to have our perspective as students. We basically told them: ‘to be inclusive, it would be best to have English as the main language of communication’. But then there is also the tradition of the Valkhof museum to cooperate with German partners and visitors, so in their tradition, the main language of communication is Dutch, followed by German and English (or English and German). We wanted the main language to be English, not only for the big texts, but also for the videos, to make it more attractive to the general student population. But the museum reverted back to what they were used to. It was a very small thing, but I think we could have spent our time better if we had known there were certain things we couldn’t have changed, and we could have dedicated our energy elsewhere, towards things that were possible to change. The boundaries were sometimes a bit blurred.”
“Basically, how museums usually work, they work with internal and external stakeholders. That makes sense for the museum. We as a core group were basically put in charge of the exhibition concept, or so we were told, which included the upcoming written narrative – the story we wanted to tell to the visitors – and we had a lot of ideas. Each of us in the core group prepared little powerpoints, presented what we thought about black holes, our study backgrounds, and we really connected with each other. From those conversations, we came up with a ‘master narrative’ which included the narrative, but also how to set it up in reality, spatial design, colour coding. One member had a really cool idea for making a vintage space poster, like Star Wars.”
“And once we were told there were also external stakeholders involved, like a design team, we were excited to work together with them, we spent a lot of time on it, which says a lot, as students. We had multiple meetings. But what we weren’t really told – and I’m just saying that this should have been made clear upfront, to make sure we spent our time properly – was that the design team were the ones in charge because they had a lot of practical experience. We could give them our plans, but they would then tell us what they could do with that. And once they got back to us, I think all of us were shocked because the plan was completely different from what we had in mind with the story we wanted to tell. It was very different. We all really had to get warmed up to the idea. This is not to say that I don’t like the exhibition space as it is now, but we really had to get used to the idea because, at first, we didn’t know how this was going to go. And I think we would have done things differently if there had been transparent communication. I don’t want to sound too critical, but I remember everyone having a moment of silence when the plans were presented in front of us. We were like: ‘Huh? How did they come up with that?’. It was a surprise.”
Did you learn anything about philosophy, politics or religion while you were working on the exhibition?
“Well, I did learn a lot, of course, because another member of the core group is literally studying PPS, and she was very inspiring in her talks. I feel like she had a very personal stake in it. I love learning from other people as well. We had a lot of different backgrounds in the core group, and, of course, in the senate, but we didn’t collaborate as much with the senate as with the other core group members. I like to just listen to the very amazing ideas people have around me, obviously there is a reason why the collaboration wanted to have a philosophy student, and I think it was a great mix.”
“The connection emphasised to me that mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion are all around us. People look up at the same night sky, as part of this imaginary of people thinking about the universe – we are all part of this. But there are still structural things in place that means that this togetherness is obstructed. We set others apart – we obstruct this togetherness. We create Otherness, we perpetuate ideas of cultural supremacy, we try to separate art and science.”
“In my studies this is very much a point of attention, but to also see these ideas and points of attention emphasised in the work we were doing together, across studies and faculties, was really nice. The exhibition united students of all disciplines in thinking about black holes, and this unitedness is one of the goals of the exhibition itself.”
“I like that the exhibition shows that people always have been, and always will be, curious about the world around them. I really like that.”
The location and the exhibition itself describes itself as “accessible to wheelchair users and the disabled” on the website. Do you think this is the case?
“It is now! For people with physical disabilities. So basically, when the initial design plans were shown to us, and we had a discussion about it, people were like ‘is it accessible for people who use wheelchairs?’, because the initial plan had obstructed the wheelchair ramp with walls. This was rectified, so now it is accessible for people with a wheelchair.”
“But for some exhibition pieces, specifically ones that use a lot of light and noise, I would have appreciated a warning for people who are sensitive to flashing lights or intense sensory input in general. I don’t think there’s a warning in place right now, and that might limit accessibility for some people. But for the videos, for example, the education videos, there was a lot of conversation about how to deal with the sound. So we finally decided on ‘sound showers’, which I really like. Sound showers come from a source in the ceiling, and you have to stand under it, literally like a shower head but for sound. If you’re not under it, you don’t hear it. So that is good for people who would be overwhelmed by a lot of different sounds in the same room.”
“And I also remember when we first went into the building on the Keizer Karelplein before the exhibition was set up. A lot of people from our group felt that the physical space of the building was very disorienting, challenging, and we kind of wanted it to not be overwhelming. There are a lot of colours, weirdly-shaped pillars, and we just wanted to create a coherent environment. When we were walking through the building at first, we felt quite uncomfortable. We felt we really had to work with the space and we didn’t want it to be too overwhelming for visitors. I think the exhibition itself is quite a lot, you know, it’s a bit overwhelming in terms of the content and the fact that it makes you feel like a little thing in the universe, it’s quite existential. This is making me think about Camus. May I refer to Camus?”
You may.
“I think Camus would have liked this exhibition a lot. You see yourself as this tiny thing, right in front of a black hole, and you think ‘Yes, it exists, you can ask a lot of questions and learn about it, but you can’t escape it, so you just have to face it’… I do like Camus.” Jonathan laughs a little at his own admiration for Camus.
I recall that the students involved in the exhibition were each asked to devise a question for the visitors to consider as they walked around the exhibition. Your question was along the lines of: “Imagine you are being sucked into a black hole and into a different dimension, and you have to leave something behind. What is it?”. What would you leave behind as you went Into the Black Hole?
“I asked this question because I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to answer the question. I think that everyone does want to leave something negative behind, maybe they feel that it isn’t a part of their story. So I feel like it’s, again, a very existential question. Usually, I tend to want to think about it, not just give a funny answer. I guess I would want to leave behind the feeling that I don’t deserve good things. Because I do, and everyone else also does. I don’t like it when people question their worth.”
Speaking of worth, and as a way to round off the interview, what do you think makes the ‘Into the Black Hole’ exhibition worth experiencing?
“I think the fact that it encourages people to experience curiosity, in the face of their fear. People look at black holes and think: ‘this is scary, but I’m going to study it anyway’. This is very human. I think the exhibition is a testament to human beings doing things both because of, and in spite of, existential fear or dread. Students, artists, scientists, everyone.”