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FEATURES | GENEVA<br />
A ballet troupe uses<br />
an image of the<br />
collision from the<br />
DELPHI particle<br />
detector to inform<br />
their dance<br />
SOMETHING UNIQUE IS HAPPENING at a laboratory<br />
on the outskirts of Geneva. It’s not the usual stories<br />
you hear in relation to CERN – about the search for<br />
antimatter, the invention of the World Wide Web<br />
by Tim Berners-Lee or the recent news of particles<br />
travelling faster than the speed of light – it’s about the<br />
unlikely relationship that is blossoming there between<br />
art and science. Amid the dials and the quarks and<br />
the quantum physics, for much of the past decade, this<br />
most international of labs has been inviting all manner<br />
of creative types to exhibit and perform work there.<br />
Rap acts, jazz bands and even a small symphony<br />
orchestra have appeared. But that’s not all. In 2005,<br />
Lombardy artist Gianni Motti walked the 27km of<br />
the infamous LHC tunnel as a performance piece,<br />
accompanied by physicist Jean-Pierre Merlo. Last<br />
year, American artist Josef Kristofoletti painted a<br />
pop-art mural on the side of the building, depicting<br />
the collider, and back in March, choreographer Gilles<br />
Jobin premiered a contemporary dance piece based on<br />
the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Spider Galaxies.<br />
70 | TRAVELLER<br />
American artist Josef<br />
Kristofoletti painted this<br />
mural on the side of the<br />
building, which houses<br />
the Large Hadron<br />
Collider at CERN<br />
“Science provides understanding,<br />
Its soundtrack was made up of noises generated by<br />
synthesising the data collected from the collider.<br />
The latest venture between the laboratory and the<br />
art world is taking this relationship to an even higher<br />
level. Collide@CERN is a residential arts programme<br />
that pairs artists with scientist mentors. A diverse<br />
platform of cultural ambassadors, including sculptor<br />
Antony Gormley, artist Mariko Mori, photographer<br />
Andreas Gursky and the musician Brian Eno – all of<br />
whom have been inspired by the facility – have been<br />
appointed patrons of the project and tasked with<br />
creating art for the lab.<br />
Anyone can visit CERN for a tour and see temporary<br />
exhibitions (cern.ch). The current one, curated by<br />
comic-book artist Fiami, uses graphic art to depict the<br />
history of women in science runs until 20 December.<br />
“What I am trying to do at CERN is to<br />
create artistic engagement that is not driven by<br />
communicating the science but, rather, driven by<br />
the inspiration of the ideas which science offers to<br />
the imagination of artists,” says Ariane Koek,
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