OPENINGS
FUTURE OPENING
07LEARNING TO FLY
Technological Evolution and Consciousness
A tribute to "The Incident" symposium
Saturday, June 14, 2025
Generative Center
@ Cerchio 91
Via Besso 42 a,
6900, Lugano Besso
Switzerland
6900, Lugano Besso
Switzerland
13.30 - 24.00 | FULL PROGRAM BELOW
Abstract
"By looking to archaic origins, we can teleport ourselves further down our own evolutionary path - only in the opposite direction."
Robert A. Fischer
In the perpetual human quest for transcendence, technology emerges as a profound metaphor for spiritual and evolutionary transformation. Drawing inspiration from Robert A. Fischer's groundbreaking research on Aboriginal technological consciousness, this opening explores the delicate intersection of material innovation, inner exploration, and the potential for human adaptation.
Fischer's study of the boomerang whilst living with the Australian Pintupi First Nation, reveals a radical thesis: technological evolution is not about constant material progression, but about a profound internal transformation. As he provocatively asks, "Why did aboriginal evolution stop after the boomerang?" The answer lies in a revolutionary understanding of technology as a gateway to consciousness."
Key Philosophical Threads
- Technology as Spiritual Instrument: "The soul, they discovered, could transport itself through space and time, with at least as much magic as the boomerang. The outer technology found an inner correlate."
- The Evolution of Artistic Practice: "We are... not confronted anymore with the sequential linear production of the object of art as a strategy of finality. The emphasis is on the process, structure, model and architecture of art making."
- The Artist as Evolutionary Engineer : "The artist's task will be more and more to be the engineer who designs the very models of future communication."
PROGRAM
13:30 | Doors Open
14:00 | Opening and Welcome
14:30 - 15:45
ROUND TABLE: THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE PERIPHERAL
A round table exploring art curation's past, present, and future potentials, investigating how marginal perspectives reshape our understanding of technological and cultural evolution.
A round table exploring art curation's past, present, and future potentials, investigating how marginal perspectives reshape our understanding of technological and cultural evolution.
Focus on author Michael Heim's work on this subject and out of his extensive writing about the original "The Incident" symposium at Belluard Fribourg in 1995:
"There is something like a peripheral vision by which humans glimpse their future from the corners of the eye. Peripheral knowledge of the future does note register clearly on the central focus. (...) The biospsychic body continually collects information about present trends and future adjustments; it constantly projects patterns for adaptation; it alerts us through dreams, art, and creative contemplation. For the mind's central focus, the truth is out there; for the peripheral mind, the truth has already landed - within."
“Virtual Realism”, Michael Heim.
Opening: Rob La Frenais
Participants: Noah Stolz, Klaus Hersche (TBC), Felix Bachmann, Kevin Merz, participants TBC
Virtual Participants: Rob La Frenais (UK), Sarah Sparkes (UK)
Virtual Participants: Rob La Frenais (UK), Sarah Sparkes (UK)
16:00 - 17:30
ROUND TABLE: THE BOOMERANG EFFECT
A dive into Robert A. Fischer's artwork, research, and technological vision, exploring how ancient technologies mirror our contemporary search for meaning.
ROUND TABLE: THE BOOMERANG EFFECT
A dive into Robert A. Fischer's artwork, research, and technological vision, exploring how ancient technologies mirror our contemporary search for meaning.
Key Discussion Points:
- The boomerang as a metaphor for technological and spiritual evolution
- Stopping material development to concentrate on "mental technologies"
- Electronic devices as an "intermediate stage towards a next step in human evolution"
Virtual Participants: Jacob Logos (Australia), Kathleen Rogers (UK)
18:00 | Performance TBD:
An immersive experience exploring the boundaries between physical motion, technological representation, and spiritual projection.
19:30 | Music TBD: A soundscape investigating the resonances between technological precision and improvisational arguments.
Visual exhibitions:
- Learning to Fly short AI document /
- The Incident tapes / sound loops of the original Incident conferences
Online pieces:
- Rob La Frenais interview / working process Incident Film
- Klaus Hersche interview / working process Incident Film
- Learning to Fly short animate AI clip on Robert Fischers conference excerpt
Closing Reflection
"We should consider our new electronic toys as an intermediate stage towards a next step in human evolution."
Ultimately, this opening invites participants to reimagine technology not as a linear progression of material artifacts, but as a dynamic, transformative process of consciousness—a perpetual "learning to fly" that transcends the limitations of our current understanding.
21:00 - 24:00 | Follow-up Discussion and Exchange
ABOUT THE INCIDENT
In 1994, young art curator and video artist Rob La Frenais proposed himself as Artistic Director for Festival Belluard Bollwerk a small yet already renowned performance festival in the mediaeval city of Fribourg / Freiburg. Founded in 1157 by Berthold IV, Duke of Zähringen, the city of Fribourg has been set at extraordinary vertical discrepancies, shoring the serpentine Sarine river. Set at the Röstigraben, cultural boundary between the German and French-speaking Switzerland, Fribourg has one of the least visibly unpolluted mediaeval centres. It is surrounded by nature, carved into the molasse sedimentary stone. This gem of a city offers a feeling of personal intimacy like no other. Upon interest by the Belluard Bollwerk committee, La Frenais then visited Fribourg, and was engaged as Artistic Director for the 1995 edition. He immediately contacted James Turrell, who accepted to help curate the symposium, which they entitled “The Incident”.
The Incident was to become an unprecedented phenomenon, never to have been experienced in Fribourg and, for reasons still unclear, never to happen again.
“People in Fribourg had never seen anything like this. That was one of its beauties. It was about life on earth, mysteries, life in the cosmos, no frontiers between science and art, religion, philosophy, the whole thing just landed. It marked the people’s spirits and minds. “Marqués les esprits” in French. I think it galvanised those who participated to sort of believe that one could take these things seriously and get people interested in it and what is this stuff- the mysteries of life.”
Jeremy Narby, author and activist.
Major figures from the arts, technology and science alongside researchers in unexplained phenomena, covered areas from parapsychology, ufology, dreams, and other subjects that concerned the exploration of human consciousness. Invitees included James Turrell, Terence McKenna, Jacques Vallée, Urike Rosenbach, Roy Ascott, Michael Lindemann, Kathleen Rogers, Keiko Sei, Jeremy Narby, Kristine Stiles, Budd Hopkins, Marko Peljhan, Rod Dickinson, Robert A. Fischer, Sergius Golowin, H. R. Giger, Michael Heim, Robert Bauval. The Incident brought together parallel debates from often differing fields, such as the comparison of cyberspace, virtual reality and artificial life with studies of the nature of religious experience, shamanism, and dreaming.
A second symposium was held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, in London, UK in 1996. It examined the meaning of phenomena that exists in the realm of the “unexplained” from different angles. In addition to a number of participants of the first symposium, it included Robert Bauval, David Peat, Luis Eduardo Luna, Linda Montano and Minette Lehmann.