Symposium: Knowledge at the Edge of Collapse

Symposium: Knowledge at the Edge of Collapse
Perversionism, Anomalistics & Disruptology

With Bassam El Baroni, Giulia Bini, Joakim Forsgren, Lars Bang Larsen, Stina Nyberg, and Isabelle Ståhl. Introductory lecture performance by Mandus Ridefelt and Madeleine Andersson.

When you follow science to its edge, things no longer act like they are supposed to. The vastness of observational techniques, computational depth and experimental systems that resist reproduction all add to a scenario where things are becoming weird.

In the closing week of Madeleine Andersson: SHOCK VALUE, Index presents, Knowledge at the Edge of Collapse, a two-day symposium organized by Andersson and Mandus Ridefelt. The symposium will explore a reimagined relationship between art and science, posing questions like; Are anomalies becoming the norm? Is perversion a driving force of science? The symposium takes its point of departure from the current exhibition at Index and invites a wide range of artists, curators and theorists to speak about subjects in the periphery of science. From their separate fields of knowledge and research the participants will present a sequence of stories, images, sounds and concepts, collapsing the boundaries of artistic research and scientific methodology.

SCHEDULE

FRIDAY 22.08
17:00-17:15 Introduction

17:15-17:45 Madeleine Andersson & Mandus Ridefelt: Perversion of Science
The history of science is a history of the normative. And you know what happens when you are obsessed with the norm – it quickly turns into the question of anomaly. And Perversion of Science is a lecture performance obsessed with the anomaly. In it, we trace how scientific methodology shifts according to what our idea of a legible experiment is. We look, poke and lick at the existential dimensions of self-experimental designs and place the pervert as the antagonist of a kind of knowledge that doesn’t accept boundaries, be they ethical, planetary or concerning selfhood itself.

18:00-18:30 Stina Nyberg: The woman who lit the world
“The woman who lit the world” is a story about geniuses obsessed with electricity. For a long time, the choreographer Stina Nyberg has been walking in the footsteps of the inventor Nikola Tesla; gathering stories, technologies and myths about the vibrant history of electricity. In “The woman who lit the world” she tells the story of the uprise and downfall of great men who build towers and gigafactories in their quest of harnessing the forces of nature in the service of mankind. Step by step, the story of Nikola Tesla becomes a story of Northvolt, and a story about herself. There is a lack of public fascination with electricity, and Stina Nyberg is here to cure that.

18:45-19:30 Bassam El Baroni

19:30-20:00 Reception

SATURDAY 23.08
14:00-14:15 Introduction

14:15-14:45 Conversation between Giulia Bini, Madeleine Andersson and Mandus Ridefelt: The Permanent Search for Anomalies
In this conversation, we invite Giulia Binia to share her experiences of being curator at large scientific institutions such as EFPL and CERN. We focus on the roles and relations involved in curating art and science, stretching across people, instruments and their anomalies. How do we look for that which we do not understand?

15:00-15:30 Isabelle Ståhl: Self-Experimentation with Psychedelic Drugs – and the Attempt to Feel Like Others
From Goethe’s colour studies to Walter Benjamin’s mescaline protocols in Berlin, self-experimentation has been used to approach other states of mind. Far from being an anomaly, it forms part of a long tradition in the history of science — often described as the cultura animi tradition — in which philosophical, medical, and artistic practices aimed not only to produce knowledge but to refine perception and cultivate ways of engaging with radically different experiences. In 1920s Germany, psychedelic self-experiments were used both to chart madness as the last undiscovered continent and to cultivate empathy for the perceptual worlds of those diagnosed as psychotic. Drawing on my book “Psykets laboratorium” (Ellerströms, 2023) — a study of psychedelic self-experiments in the Weimar Republic — I explore self-experimentation as a method moving between science, literature, and art, dissolving the boundaries between subject and object.

15:30-16:15 Lars Bang Larsen: The Naked Brain
Locked in a dialectical showdown with modern rationality and its hardened contours of capitalised behaviour, the counterculture of the 1960s preferred good shit and creative madness instead of sound reasoning. Still, the psychedelic revolution was not a decapitation but took the head as a battleground: acid heads aimed to attain a jellyskull, to trepanate rationality… and free their minds. And might there even have lurked a logocentrism in the notion of the psyche-delic that was adopted by the freaks? In this talk I will focus – or maybe not focus, but hopefully like blur productively some constitutive tensions in psychedelia between vision and cognition, experience and knowledge. To consider where it leaves us today.

16:30-17:00 Joakim Forsgren
Based on a CT scan of René Descartes’ skull that Forsgren did in 2019 at Skåne University Hospital, the skull bone has now been cast in bell metal. The artist will make it sing.

PARTICIPANTS

Mandus Ridefelt is a writer and science communicator living in Copenhagen. His work concerns science, art and philosophy as conceptual constellations and infrastructural speculation. He has worked with a range of organizations including International Society for Artificial Life, Society for Multidisciplinary and Fundamental Research, Diakron (DK), Medialab Matadero (ES), Simiyya (EG/DK) and Trust (DE).

Madeleine Andersson is an artist based in Copenhagen, with a research-based practice which concerns the absurdity of technology, science and human intelligence. The work by Andersson has previously exhibited at O–Overgaden, Copenhagen (2024), documenta institute, Kassel (2024), Vermillion Sands, Copenhagen (2024), Färgfabriken,Stockholm (2023); NSFW, Gothenburg (2023), Bærum Kunsthal (2022) and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022).

Lars Bang Larsen is an art historian and curator, and Head of Art & Research at Art Hub Copenhagen. His research focuses on modern and contemporary histories of art, ideas, and technologies, situated at the limits of Western culture and visual worlds.

Joakim Forsgren is an artist with a purposeful, reductive creative process where each idea has an inherent form and desired materialization. The result can be an exhibition such as Dark Matter Golden Door at Konstnärshuset or a music album as AUTORHYTHM – Songs for the Nervous System. He has also participated in group exhibitions such as Swedish Ecstasy at Bozar in Brussels and GIBCA, Göteborg International Biennal for Contemporary Art. As a curator, he has made exhibitions like Istället för gravar, Region Gävleborg and Secondhand Daylight, Kummelholmen.

Stina Nyberg is a choreographer and dancer based in Stockholm. Her artistic practice departs from the political and social history of the body, seen from a feminist perspective. The choreographic work is rooted in physical practices that guide the embodied research through representations, histories and power relations. Stina Nyberg’s work has been presented in venues across Europe and the USA and are highly appreciated for their discursive grounding paired with a direct and humoristic undertone. Oftentimes, her different works entangle with each other, creating webs of investigations that span over several years and meets the public in various formats such as stage performances, city walks, publications and symposiums. Apart from her accomplishment as an independent choreographer she takes pride in being part of several collaborations. Since 2013 she has been hosting a series of symposiums with Sofia Wiberg, researcher in Urban studies. She is also a part of the choreographic collective Samlingen and during 2024-26 part of the artistic cohort of Rose Choreographic School at Sadler’s Wells in London.

Isabelle Ståhl is a Swedish author, cultural critic for Dagens Nyheter, and intellectual historian. Her debut novel Just nu är jag här (Natur & Kultur, 2017) was shortlisted for the August Prize. Her most recent novel, Eden (Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2023), stages a form of collective self-experiment beyond the boundaries of civilisation. She holds a PhD in the history of ideas from Stockholm University and is the author of the dissertation Psykets laboratorium (Ellerströms, 2023), a study of experiments with psychedelic drugs in 1920s Germany.

Bassam El Baroni is associate professor in curating and mediating art at the Department of Art and Media, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University. He holds a PhD in Curatorial Knowledge, department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London. Prior to working at Aalto University, he was lecturer in art theory at ArtEZ University of the Arts, the Netherlands.
His research lies at the intersection of curatorial practice/studies, theory, technology, and economics. Through exhibitions, publications and other media, he has most recently been preoccupied with financialization in relation to artistic practices and artists’ engagement with infrastructural futures and histories. Bassam is an internationally recognised curator who has curated and co-curated biennials of contemporary art in Spain (Manifesta 8, Murcia, 2010 – 2011), Norway (LIAF, Lofoten Islands, 2013), Ireland (Eva International – Ireland’s Biennial, Limerick, 2014), and Lebanon (HOME WORKS 7, Beirut, 2015). Most recently he curated the exhibition Infrahauntologies at the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, Oldenburg, Germany, and La Box, ENSA Bourges, France (2021 and 2022).

Giulia Bini is a curator, program manager, and institutional strategist with a decade of experience pioneering experimentation at the nexus of contemporary and media art, science, and advanced technologies in curatorial practice, theory, and writing. Since May 2025, she is Curator & Head of Arts at CERN, leading initiatives that connect artistic inquiry with fundamental scientific research. Originally trained as an art historian, her work explores how techno-scientific discourse and transdisciplinarity are redefining artistic practices, institutions, and exhibition methods. Dr. Bini was the founding head of program and curator of Enter the Hyper-Scientific, the artist-in-residence program at EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. She previously served as curator and producer at EPFL Pavilions (2018–2021), and was a member of the curatorial team at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (2014–2017). She has curated numerous group and solo exhibitions and collaborated with leading international institutions. Bini regularly contributes to publications and is the author of Media Spazio Display. ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medien | HfG Hochschule für Gestaltung (Mimesis Edizioni, Milan, 2022). She also lectured at HEAD-Geneva Work.Master (2021 – 2024), ​​and was a member of the Committee of Experts of Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council (2021 – 2025).