In a new commission, Pierre Huyghe delves into uncertainty using quantum experiments

The large-scale environment at Halle am Berghain encompasses film, sound, vibration and light. Described by the artist as a “modern myth,” the film at its core follows the emergence of a faceless, human-like figure, which moves through shifting states. As the artist describes, it is “set in a realm outside time and space, where there is no beginning or end, no inside or outside, only an incessant dance of matter, in which every moment is a maybe. We witness the figure’s attempts to exist, communicate and escape a single state of reality or consciousness. We see a dissolution of boundaries between inner and outer realms, and between living and non-living matter.”

For Huyghe, uncertainty is explored through this allegory to reveal a liminal space where states are superimposed. It is analogous to how a quantum system can exist in multiple states before it is measured, when infinite possibilities collapse into a single version of reality. Huyghe spoke with quantum physicist Tommaso Calarco and philosopher Tobias Rees to explore these ideas. Their conversations resulted in Huyghe’s use of the logic and outputs of quantum systems, informing the final work through sound as well as image. These innovative approaches to production embody states of uncertainty, transforming quantum properties into sensory experiences.

Vibration and sound play an important role in the work. Huyghe and his team used many experimental methods to create a dense sonic experience. Among these, they worked with Calarco and researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich (Jülich research centre) in Germany to simulate the oscillation of matter depicted in the film on a 100-qubit Pasqal quantum computer, translating the results into moments in the sound design. Calarco describes the process as analogous to “plucking the computer’s atom array to hear its reverberations.” With Rees, Huyghe developed the idea of quantum as a radical outside of human ontology and made use of a quantum noise-based AI model to produce certain scenes in the film.

The commission invites us into a space where the boundaries between body, matter and consciousness begin to blur. It dwells in the moment before perception becomes stable, when multiple possibilities coexist at once. With this work, Huyghe strives to give form to what he calls the “radical outside” of human subjectivity — a quantum reality of uncertainty and multiplicity. By placing a human-like body within this unstable realm, he asks whether we can relate to such a reality at all, and what conditions might allow multiple states of existence to be experienced at once.

Pierre Huyghe’s Liminals is commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and Hartwig Art Foundation. It marks the second large-scale installation presented by LAS Art Foundation as part of its Sensing Quantum programme, which won the S+T+ARTS – Grand Prize: Innovation Collaboration from the European Commission following the launch of Laure Prouvost: WE FELT A STAR DYING in Spring 2025.

“An observer witnessing the ambiguous nature of the entity, its monstrosity, follows states of indeterminacy — of the uncertainty of being, living or existing. The film portrays an inexistent being, a soulscape, a radical outside, striving to combine empathy with the impossible. [Its fictional world is a] vehicle for accessing what could be or could not be — to relate with chaos; and turns states of uncertainty into a cosmos.”

— Pierre Huyghe