Currently on view at SMAC San Marco Art Centre in Venice, The Quantum Effect marks a century since the breakthroughs in quantum science that redefined our understanding of reality – first imagined by minds like Max Planck and Albert Einstein. Curated by Daniel Birnbaum and Jacqui Davies, the exhibition defies traditional categories, it is an art show that questions what an art show can be. Across a mirrored, reflexive exhibition space, works by Jeff Koons, John McCracken, Mark Leckey, and Dara Birnbaum appear alongside scientific experiments and quantum equations, creating a show where art, science, and perception collapse into one another.

To help unpack this ingeniously high-concept exhibition, curators Daniel Birnbaum and Jacqui Davies sat down for a conversation about the show’s origins, the challenges of its unconventional approach, and the enduring question of whether anyone can truly understand quantum theory.

Daniel Birnbaum: This year happens to be an anniversary year, even the UN is marking this as the Quantum Year. A century has passed since the groundbreaking discoveries in quantum science that reshaped our understanding of reality and changed the world. And that’s how the idea came: could we do a show around these themes? My first reaction was very much that I have no idea what that would look like. I didn’t really know if artists were immediately reacting to these things. We had a chat about it and discovered that quantum theory has had an enormous impact, when you start thinking about it.

An interesting novel that we took as one of our starting points was Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel. He was a proto-surrealist writer and a major inspiration for Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp famously said that Roussel showed him the way. But the novel has been an inspiration for many interesting people. We read it and discovered that it’s an account of a science park-like structure, with a number of incredible experiences where a strange scientist invites his friends and colleagues who witness eight “miracles”. Our show, in a way, follows that structure.
Jacqui Davies: When we started the process, we were thinking about the part of Locus Solus which mentions these eight glass rooms and the extraordinary things that are happening inside each one of them. We were given access to half of the exhibition space, which is eight rooms. It made perfect sense. But the more we got into ideas around quantum theory, the more we got interested in ideas of mirroring and entanglement. So the idea of glass and seeing things through glass is interesting, but also there’s a lot of referencing to mirroring in quantum theory. It’s not just mirrors as we know them – it’s a way to explain the way certain behaviours happen on the quantum level. So what we proposed is that we make a show which is basically doubled; it exists as a mirror version of itself. 

DB: Some people might think that the whole show is about glass, because there is a lot of glass and mirrors. The first space is that infinitely reflective mirror room by Isa Genzken. But then you come into rooms where there are vitrine-like structures by Tomás Saraceno, by Jeff Koons, by Mark Leckey. But it all goes back to the Duchamp/Roussel connection. Roussel caused Duchamp to stop being a painter. He started as a Cubist painter, more or less. He did his very first glass object, called The Glider, and we have a Man Ray photo of The Glider in the exhibition.
JD: Ulf Danielsson, the famed physicist, has been immensely useful for us because we were very naive about a lot of these ideas. Oftentimes, discussing them between one another is not always helpful, because you go from Point A back to Point A. For example, the idea of these beautiful equations throughout the show was very interesting, but it seemed extremely arrogant for us to just assign scientific notions to works. So we worked with Ulf to actually talk about the works and what we thought they appeared to represent. He helped us with that, and I think he found it very fun, actually.

DB: The show is a little bit different from most things I’ve been involved with, because I’ve been mainly involved with art shows. This isn’t really an art show. It mixes objects that belong to different categories. There are physical experiments in the show. There are equations, which are mathematical objects, if you want. There are things that are a little bit between art and curatorial devices, mainly produced by Jacqui. And then there are very famous artworks.
JD: By its very nature, quantum is not something that you see in classical reality. There are not a lot of images that one can attach to a lot of these ideas. It’s primarily in cinema and some other aspects of popular culture where you do have a much bigger push and more of an attempt to grapple with some of these ideas. For example, with notions of passing through from one reality into another, of course, we all think of Alice in Wonderland. We had to find vehicles to try to bring the quantum ideas closer to things that we saw in visual arts and these cinematic devices and films were a way of doing that.

DB: Some of the works have a direct relationship to quantum ideas. We have that pretty well-known object by Jeff Koons called Equilibrium, which is a basketball hovering mysteriously in an aquarium. That was produced with the help of Richard Feynman, who was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who famously said that if you think you understand quantum theory, you don’t get it. [laughs] That is a comforting quote.
JD: There are all these quantum theories out there, like teleportation. We have a great teleportation piece by Dara Birnbaum called, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman. It’s a legendary work, actually. The film appropriates material from Wonder Woman and we see Wonder Woman whirring around, transforming from her regular self into her superhero alter-ego. The idea is that she’s obviously deconstituted and reconstituted as Wonder Woman. The fact that it’s called Technology/Transformation is very interesting, because Birnbaum was one of the first artists to use television in art. People were watching seven hours of television a day, and by actually appropriating things, taking them apart, and remaking them in a way, it was a way of remaking the world.

DB: An interesting question might be: did quantum theory really create these effects in the arts, or did the arts already anticipate them and quantum theory simply proved them correct? We use this quote by Marshall McLuhan: “Mysticism is just tomorrow’s science dreamed today.” Raymond Roussell had not read quantum theory. He was a strange, fantastical writer, and it seems he was actually anticipating many of the things that the Nobel Prize–winning quantum theorists would explore half a century later. 

The Quantum Effect is co-curated by Daniel Birnbaum & Jacqui Davies and produced by SMAC and OGR Torino. The exhibition will run until November 23rd.