inhabit the impossible

A cross-disciplinary Field-Performance

17-21 January 2023
WUK
Währinger Straße 59
1090 Vienna

Inhabit the impossible?
Isn't that what we do all the time?
And what is possible or real, impossible or false?

Possibility and reality are usually thought of as a dichotomy. That means: something is either possible or real, but not both at the same time. There is always the same temporal sequence between possibility and reality: first are the possibilities, in the best case there are several of them. Then comes reality - it results from one of the possibilities, all the other possibilities have become obsolete, because they have not become real. But could it not also be quite different?

The French philosopher Henri Bergson raised this question. Must possibility and reality always be mutually exclusive? And couldn't reality come first for once, from which possibilities subsequently emerge?

According to quantum physicist Tanja Traxler: "In quantum physics, there are various phenomena that motivate us to rethink the traditional understanding of possibility and reality. For example, it is not yet completely certain whether virtual particles actually exist and the question also arises as to what existence could mean in connection with virtual particles. We cannot prove their existence directly, but we cannot exclude them either, ever! Even if they have no mass and only an all too short life span, virtual particles embody what Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuzes dreamed of: a particle, what Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuzes dreamed of: a form of possibility that is real in its being possible."

© Evi Jägle / WUK