Hydra, the longest and largest of the 88 constellations, is visible over Hamburg’s night sky this summer. The small amphitheater of the Stadtpark hosts a theater of stars, in the form of colored concrete spheres — casts of used balls from a variety of games — which mirror Hydra’s position and its surrounding constellations in the sky.

As fossilized remnants of contemporary society, they embody the social and cultural bonds formed through play, while reflecting the vast scale of the galaxies in which these dynamics unfold, connecting the cosmos to the commons.

The colors of the balls relate to the Morgan-Keenan Classification System for stars according to their age and temperature. The orange giant, Alphard, being the largest star in the Hydra constellation at 177 light years away from Earth.

In mythology, Hydra is a nine-headed water serpent or monster, of which one head is immortal. When a head is severed, two more heads emerge, making the creature almost impossible to defeat. The heads symbolize struggle, resilience, and regeneration, as well as the vices people are to overcome. In its celestial form, however, Hydra is depicted with only one head, the immortal one. Here on the ground in Hamburg, it can also relate to the story of the so-called Hamburg Hydra.

In 1735, the city’s mayor put up for auction what was claimed to be the remains of a Hydra, an extraordinary find that captured the imagination of the public, only for Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus to reveal it as a forged specimen. The installation evokes this historical fakery and the contrasting pursuit of truth and fair play within shifting personal, societal, and cosmic narratives.


Heidi Voet was born in Belgium in 1972 and lives between Brussels and Taipei.

Location of the work on Google Maps