THE ART'S MATTER

Because life is an art, medecine is an art, physiology is an art, and research is an art, Dr Xavier Leinekugel, a  prominent French Neuroscience researcher at Institut de Neurobiologie de la MEDiterranée (INMED, Marseille), renown in the field of the physiology, plasticity and pathology of neural circuits, with a particular emphasis on the involvement of brain rhythms in neuronal coding and time-organisation of behaviour, aka the Brain, and Eric Schlosser, the art director of TAF, aka Saint Patron of the Arts, were destined to meet. Also because they are both leaving in the south of France. That meeting happened during the winter of 2021, in a luxurious art collector’s villa (whose name cannot be disclosed here), overlooking the Marseille bay, in the aftermath of the pandemic, lockdowns, canceled shows, closed museums and imposed social distancing measures on populations across the globe. The passionate conversation between those two, on art, science, and the best temperature to boil pasta, lasted until the sun majestically rose on the Mediterranean Sea, and the collector and his wife begged them to leave. The starting idea was: we had been obliged to retreat into the virtual world, deprived of emotions arising when sharing a space with other people, and of the possibility of discovering works of art in the physical world. 

Ideas turned into research and experiments, and eventually into this work in progress performance at TAF for its world Premiere ! During 4 days, Xavier and Eric will share with the guests of TAF the results of those latest investigations connecting the power of the mind to the power of the body. As we all know, life is movement. Even our deepest emotions need incarnation, not to vanish in vain, unnoticed. And because people are very much like mice (just a bit larger), we will be happy to let the audience share the experience of a laboratory mice. That is in this case, to sit on exquisitely sensitive pressure sensors, and let the beauty of the maths turn embodied emotions into rainbow colours. Whether as a contributor to participative science or as an intrigued individual, you are warmly invited to join the experiment and generate your colourful, partially enigmatic, emotional profile, when exposed to a work of art. 

Don’t forget to bring all your senses with you !

Otherwise you might miss the intellectual and emotional thrill !

Xavier Leinekugel

Eric Schlosser