Fertile Void

Fertile Void looks at the promises and narratives of quantum technologies through the lens of culturally situated, more-than-human, and counter-hegemonic epistemologies and the arts. Through artistic intervention, discourse, performances, and workshops, the festival investigates material science, and how different ways of knowing and being can contribute to understanding the social realities that emerge from quantum theorems, just as they become actualized by technology and new materials.

This year’s festival looks at the reorganization of the senses at quantum scale. It is an invitation to attend to the vibrational hum of matter at its most fundamental: in the quantum coherence of living cells, the nanobacteria attracted to electromagnetic fields, or the resonances that the ancient Earth has been sustaining for billions of years beneath the threshold of perception. By placing materials science alongside Earth history, biology, and philosophy, and routed through the sonic vibrations that enable life and worlds to unfold, the festival asks what new forms of materialism—scientific, social, and philosophical—might arise from this quantum paradigm.