GALLERY RAUMINHALT VIENNA, MARCH – MAY 2025
The exhibition “Intangible” marks the first collaboration between The ZoNE and nexus_art + science. It consists of a dynamic dialogue between science, philosophy, and art, and invites visitors to think beyond conventional narratives and models of knowledge. The focus is on the question of how life organises itself and the agency of organisms that springs from it – a new, alternative paradigm that challenges the mechanistic world view of modern science.
‘Intangible’ – the interdisciplinary examination of organismic agency
The exhibition is an artistic reflection of the research project Pushing the Boundaries, which is located at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation and led by biologist Johannes Jäger and philosopher Tarja Knuuttila, the project examines the fundamental distinction between the living and the non-living.
The exhibition consists of three parts:
The Ontology of the Undefinable
Contra Wittgenstein: Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must. Otherwise we will never be able to see clearly the limits of our knowledge, especially when it comes to the living.
Beyond the Age of Machines
As the exhibition unfolds through a dynamic dialogue, a book project is emerging from this interdisciplinary debate.
Beyond the Age of Machines reflects on and documents these processes. It sheds light on the difference between living beings and artificial systems. It questions the limits of the mechanistic view of the world, and explores how organisms organise themselves and act on their own behalf – an agency that machines fundamentally lack.
Worldmaking
Every living being brings forth a world. Our subjective experiences become reality through our actions. We need to scrutinise how modern science and society deal with this self- determined aspect of reality.
Art, philosophy and science meet on an equal footing in this exhibition. Visitors enter a space in which they are guided through dynamic arrangements of displays, videos and installations. Scientific processes are made tangible through artistic methods.
Summary PDF: intangible – pdf_small
