‘Art can make things visible that science leaves invisible,’ says Nicole Roepers, curator of contemporary art at Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden. The sentence became the starting point for a broad project on intuition. In the context of European City of Science Leiden 2022, Roepers presented the exhibition Imagine Intuition together. In the preparation she worked together with Andrea Evers, professor of health psychology at Leiden University, among others.
In the interview series about intuition, for which de Volkskrant Talking to experts in this field in the run-up to this exhibition, Evers stated that there is an old-fashioned contradiction between art and science, between body and mind. “But I think that’s a conservative way of thinking, which comes from the desire to understand everything rationally,” she said. “As if what we don’t understand rationally doesn’t exist.”
Museum De Lakenhal and Evers joined forces to take an interdisciplinary approach to the concept of intuition, with the aim of making implicit knowledge, ie intuition, accessible and understandable. Together with artists and scientists, they tried to unravel the concept of intuition through workshops.
For the exhibition, the museum commissioned seven artists to create new work around the theme. In two rooms, installations are presented to the public – without room texts, so that visitors can fully experience the works. ‘The installations encourage action, reaction or contemplation,’ says curator Roepers. ‘Visitors come face to face with machines with human characteristics, become part of interactive installations, can immerse themselves in other worlds and rituals and reflect on the relationship between body and mind.’
For example, on the square in front of the museum, an installation by Janet Vollebregt serves as an entrance portal to the exhibition. Roepers: ‘Hair Tune-In-Portal has a tuning fork that helps the visitor to ground when touched, you strike your body as it were and thus make the transition from the busy outside world to the museum environment.’
In Harmonic Dissonance: Phantom Body neuroscientist Suzanne Dikker and artist Matthias Oostrik allow art and science to flow into each other through interactive presentations. Central to their work is the human (in)ability to understand relationships. ‘Using digital technology with transforming light, cameras, video and sound, visitors are invited to use movement to create images and sound themselves and thus interact with each other.’
Bram Ellens investigates the relationship between humans and technology by assigning human or animal values to machines. In front of Imagine Intuition he opts for the representation of mother and child. ‘He sees this as an archetype for intuitive relationships and communication. For the first time he allows two robots to interact: a technically exciting exercise’, says Roepers.
In Imagine Intuition science and art touch on different levels. Roepers: ‘Artists have made use of scientific knowledge, and vice versa, scientists have been inspired by artists. The exhibition focuses mainly on art, but in the peripheral programming we zoom in with scientists on the theme of intuition – from hard facts to gut feelings.’
Imagine intuition, Lakenhal Leiden, 14/10 to 15/1.