As the three exhibitions at Turin’s OGR, all of which explored the relationship between art and technology and were brought together under the project ‘Quantum Visions, Electric Dreams’, come to an end, the recent release of a video interview with Laure Prouvost provides an opportunity to revisit her installation, ‘We Felt A Star Dying’. Commissioned by the LAS Art Foundation, a Berlin-based organization dedicated to developing research projects at the intersection of art, science and technology, and curated by Samuele Piazza, the French artist’s impressive work has occupied the evocative Binario 1 at the OGR in recent months, finding the ideal setting.
Laure Prouvost, “We felt a star dying”, 2025. Installation view at OGR Torino. Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and OGR Torino. Photo: Andrea Rossetti, ph. courtesy OGR Torino
It is a monumental work with a great visual impact that immediately and completely draws in those who experience it. However, it is worth taking the time to appreciate the less apparent aspects and, if possible, a second visit. It is, first and foremost, the outcome of a collaborative endeavor, in which Prouvost collaborated with a multitude of other experts, including the philosopher Tobias Rees and the engineer Hartmut Neven, who were dedicated to the development of practical, experiential forms for philosophical concepts and theories related to quantum physics; the musician KUKII; and the poet Paul Buck. This interdisciplinary research has resulted in a complex multisensory experiential system that engages not only the sense of sight but also the senses of smell, touch, and hearing, connecting objects and distant realms: natural elements and high technology, large mechanical structures and minute details, such as a feather stirred by a breath of air or miniatures hidden amongst mounds of dirt.
Laure Prouvost, “We felt a star dying”, 2025. Installation view at OGR Torino. Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and OGR Torino. Photo: Andrea Rossetti, ph. courtesy OGR Torino
In some ways, ‘We Felt A Star Dying’ appears to be the great-granddaughter of those utopian visions which, from the Futurists’ reconstruction of the universe to the Situationists’ playful subversion of technology, right through to the cyborg habitable machines of the radical architects of the 1960s, advocated the use of technology to create environments that would allow human beings to broaden the spectrum of their experience of reality and unleash their playful creativity. In other respects, the relevance and efficacy of this work stem from its emphasis on the idea of relationship – that is, the capacity to recognize and understand the sensations that link us to everything in our environment, including our relationships with non-human entities.
Laure Prouvost, “We felt a star dying”, 2025. Installation view at OGR Torino. Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and OGR Torino. Photo: Andrea Rossetti, ph. courtesy OGR Torino
As one goes into the dim light, the first thing one notices is a sound installation that produces changing frequencies based on how the visitor moves around the area. Once your eyes adjust to the darkness, a large, sprawling machine appears, a cybernetic version of an octopus: this is an animal that reappears in Prouvost’s work, from the French pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, where it appeared amidst the debris of a post-apocalyptic landscape, to the massive sculpture created a year ago for the Nice Biennale. The octopus, in the artist’s conception, represents the fundamental interconnectedness between sensation and thinking through its tentacles, which function as both sensory and cerebral organs. However, the massive octopus-like machine set up at the OGR can understand its surroundings and move accordingly since it is controlled by a quantum computer.
Laure Prouvost, “We felt a star dying”, 2025. Video Still (Quantum AI Model). Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and OGR Torino, ph. courtesy OGR Torino
It can be described as an artificial intelligence model based on data altered by quantum phenomena, with a high level of ‘sensitivity’ (to cosmic rays, heat, and magnetic fields), making it unstable and thus unpredictable. Prouvost has deliberately centered her effort on this specific ‘flaw’ in functioning, examining the notions of fragility and interference. A quantum computer can detect when a star dies. Perhaps we, too, the artist speculates, are sensitive to such faraway events, even if we are unaware of it? Reflection on the concept of entanglement leads to a poetic and imaginative interpretation of everything’s interconnectivity, generating issues about the nature of matter, both biological and inorganic. Machines, like humans, do not always behave the way we expect. “I am very fascinated by the concept of agency, understood as the ability to act autonomously,” explains Prouvost, who, in this case, aimed to imbue a machine with agency. So, in the video – the work’s heart, which can only be experienced by shifting one’s perspective, as one must lie down to watch it – the machine intervenes in the editing of images and footage, recombining them in different ways each time, adding elements and changing how they are perceived.
Laure Prouvost, “We felt a star dying”, 2025. Installation view at OGR Torino. Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and OGR Torino. Photo: Andrea Rossetti, ph. courtesy OGR Torino
Walking through the area where the giant mechanical tentacles move gives the sensation of having a close encounter with a non-human Other. Is it possible to characterize a machine that can interact with our presence as a sentient being? And where is the line? Prouvost’s installation generates a desire for this Other to exist and allows us to escape a sense of vertigo: the fact that, as humans, we can only know ourselves through ourselves. “Art has the power of creating interferences, to challenge established practices and ways of thinking,” says the artist. “There will always be new questions and new interferences”.
Info:
Laure Prouvost. We felt a star dying
curated by Samuele Piazza
31/10/2025 – 10/05/2026
OGR Torino
corso Castelfidardo, 22
www.ogrtorino.it
Emanuela Termine (Rome, 1978) is an art historian, lecturer and independent researcher. In 2010, she earned a PhD in Art History from Sapienza University of Rome. She worked as a curator at Sala 1, the International Center for Contemporary Art, Rome (2006-2015), and as head of the organizational secretariat of the Bruno Zevi Foundation, Rome (2005-2014). Since 2014, she has collaborated with art journals, writing art criticism. She is the author of the Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Carlo Maria Mariani (Allemandi, 2021) and of essays published in scholarly journals such as “La Diana,” “Valori Tattili,” and “Rossocorpolingua”.
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