FERTILE VOID: Quantum Paradoxes and the Physics of Living Matter @ Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HWK) [Berlin, DE] (1.-10.11.2024)

[studiofomalhaut]

"I used to think physics was just physics, separate from people. I thought we could talk about particles without talking about people. I was wrong."
—Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, 2021 [1]

FERTILE VOID features a series of lectures, performances, conversations and an exhibition that will run from the 1st through the 10th of November at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HWK) in Berlin.

_"A century after the first quantum experiments in western science, Fertile Void approaches quantum technology as a dynamic field of scientific, political, aesthetic, and cosmological inquiry in order to question the directionality, technological materiality, terms of embodiment, and cultural experiences it offers. Fertile Void refers to the vacuum—once imagined as empty space, quantum mechanics has enabled an understanding of how from an ostensible emptiness, matter may still emerge. In its poetics, the idea of nothing and something being inherently intertwined reverberates with the reality of cosmologies across time and space that have sought to understand the meaning and emergence of matter from a subatomic level, from the level of the spirit, or in the service of the divine.

Fertile Void looks at the promises and narratives of quantum technologies through the lens of culturally situated, more-than-human, and counter-hegemonic epistemologies and the arts."_

Read the full text here

With contributions from:
manuel arturo abreu, Mareike Bernien, Chloé Delarue, Linda Doyle, Ale de la Puente, Fehdah, Edy Fung, John Goold, Clara Hermann, Gesche Joost, Amy Karle, kennedy + swan, Afra Khan, Radmila Lorencová, Tina Lorenz, Augustine Larweh Mahu, Alexandra Martens-Serrano, Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan, David Odiase, Odun Orimolade, Ìfẹ́olúwa Ọ̀ṣúnkọ́yà, Natalie Paneng, Constanza Piña Pardo, Sarah Selby, Paola Torres Núñez del Prado, Radek Trnka, Michaela Vieser

Fertile Void is a cooperation between Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and the Goethe-Institut Irland / Studio Quantum, with contributions from the JUNGE AKADEMIE of the Akademie der Künste, Schering Stiftung, Universität der Künste, Berlin and Trinity College Dublin. The project is part of Berlin Science Week.

[1]Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (New York: Bold Type Books, 2021), 6.