“Nigredo” is an experience of altered self-perception by means of biophysical media – throwing visitors back on bare humanity.

“Nigredo is not for the faint of heart”, say some. “Nigredo is totally relaxing”, say others. Nigredo is an experience of altered self-perception for one visitor at a time by means of biophysical media, created by Marco Donnarumma in collaboration with Marije Baalman. Carefully but resolutely, the work pushes visitors to their individual physical and perceptual limits. Completely cut off from the hustle and bustle of the outside world, wired and connected up with all manner of sensors and technological devices, visitors become cyborgs for eight minutes while being thrown back on bare humanity.

Intense auditory, visual and tactile stimuli performed by a machine with pinpoint precision are initiated by the pulsation of one’s own body. It is a feedback process that engages equally the human body and the machine, triggering perceptions of one's own body that can only be rationally classified with hindsight. Nigredo is equally reminiscent of our uniformity and uniqueness – for all the immediacy of this self-experience trip, perceived now as too short, now as too long, may take us to the realm of both perceptual expanse and constraint.