Thu 8.10.2026
No other artist has engaged so thoroughly with the scientific work at CERN as Chris Henschke. In numerous projects he has repeatedly found new ways to make the complex and often elusive research content perceptible to the senses. Central to this was the work of the four particle detectors measuring the collisions in the Large Hadron Collider. The new audiovisual work Beyond the Quantum Horizon, for which Chris Henschke found inspiration during the SciArt Dialogue Week 2026, marks a turning point. The question of how a particle collision is possible in the first place led the artist to explore quantum fields.
“This question has an ontological and ethical dimension,” says Henschke. “If physical reality is a quantum field, then everything is fundamentally connected and there is no possibility of absolute separability. The philosopher Karen Barad uses the term ‘intra-active’ to describe our interactions with other entities, whether human or particle. Humans, other organisms, technologies, artificial systems, ecosystems — these are always energetic processes within shared fields, engaged in a continual ‘dance of agency,’ as the physicist and philosopher Andrew Pickering observes.”
This project was supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body. In cooperation with ORF musikprotokoll, art@CMS/ORIGIN, CERN – European Organization for Nuclear Research (with the experiments ATLAS – A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS, ALICE – A Large Ion Collider Experiment, CMS – Compact Muon Solenoid, LHCb – Large Hadron Collider beauty, and IdeaSquare – Innovation Space at CERN), University of Graz (Department of Arts and Musicology and interdisciplinary core research area “Perception: Episteme, Aesthetics, Politics” at the Faculty of Humanities), University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (Institute 11 Stage Design), HEPHY – Institute for High Energy Physics of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Vienna), Florida State University, The University of Alabama, RMIT University.