Fertile Void. Quantenkosmologien zwischen Wissenschaft, Geschichten und Spekulationen

In the organizer's words:

Lectures, interactive sessions, talks, performances, DJ set, installation

What is the structure of the universe and how might its investigation shape forms of knowledge and being in space and time? To mark the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, the Fertile Void festival explores the questions raised by the quantum age. It focuses on cosmological investigations, interdisciplinary research and new technologies and aims to open up ways to better understand the elusive quantum phenomena. By extending the field of quantum science to interdisciplinary areas such as quantum biology, Fertile Void 's approach aims at a scientific practice that takes into account the pluriversal proposition that the world is entangled and yet relational - at once one world and many.

Quantum cosmology connects human and non-human life as well as the earth and the cosmos itself. In this sense, it is consistent with the interdisciplinary nature of other cosmological approaches, including Ayurvedic teachings (the word Ayurveda can be literally translated as "science of life"), which are said to be 5,000 years old, 7th century Inca cosmology, mid-15th century Jewish mysticism, the divination systems of the Ifá in West Africa, or the metaphysics of the Blackfoot in what is now the United States of America. Each of these traditions exemplifies methods of inquiry that could be used to counter a reductive, Western-centric understanding of quantum science and its possibilities - each poses questions about the interrelationships between the motility of living matter and the motionlessness of space, about the emergence of the material world from apparent nothingness, and about the patterns and motions that align and emerge as phenomena. Could contemporary approaches in quantum science be translations of these older forms of understanding the world, which reappear here in a different form? New research seems to suggest so, as technologies working with quantum processors confirm that spacetime is not just curved, but granular: both malleable and composed of tiny discrete blocks or cells. This means that the world itself consists of a complicated simultaneity of uniformity and difference, of unity and diversity. Some quantum science hypotheses state that these cells are singular nodes of information that cannot be destroyed but live on independently of their macroscopic appearance. This is reminiscent of theories about dark matter, this unknown substance that has been measured across gravitational fields and is thought to make up a significant part of the universe. Some initial studies suggest that dark matter could be information that has accumulated over time in certain areas of the universe. If confirmed, what might this mean for human ideas of history, geopolitics and cultural memory?

Fertile Void: Quantum Cosmologies between Science, Histories and Speculations looks at the promises and narratives of quantum technologies through the lens of culturally situated, more-than-human and counter-hegemonic epistemologies and arts. Through artistic interventions, performances, discourse events, installations and workshops, the festival explores how different ways of knowing and being can contribute to understanding the social realities that emerge from the quantum theorems that are currently being translated into tangible reality through the use of technology.

Free admission. All events and talks (mainly) in English, with simultaneous translation into German.

With: Clarice Aiello, Tania Candiani, Ife Day, houaïda, Ale de la Puente, Sundar Sarukkai, Sandar TunTun