Venice, Fondazione Prada presents an exhibition on the human brain. Involving artists, authors and scientists

At the Venetian branch of the Fondazione Prada, at Ca’ Corner della Regina, the exhibition Human Brains. It begins with an idea, curated by Udo Kittelmann in collaboration with Taryn Simon. The exhibition spans the three floors of the building and is the result of a long and in-depth research conducted with Fondazione Prada and the Scientific Committee that began in 2018 in the field of neuroscience, with the aim of understanding the human brain, the complexity of its functions and its centrality in human history.

Through a convergence of different scientific approaches (neurobiology, philosophy, psychology, neurochemistry, linguistics, artificial intelligence and robotics), the human brain has been declined in the plural to emphasize its intrinsic complexity and the irreducible singularity of each individual. “We are increasingly interested in the relevant issues of the present, those that affect everyone’s lives, and which, at times, we do not know or do not fully understand,” commented Miuccia Prada, President of Fondazione Prada. “For a cultural institution that has its roots in the visual arts, dealing with science is an intellectual and political challenge. How to make an exhibition about ideas and knowledge?”

The exhibition begins on the ground floor, where a series of projections introduces visitors to the anatomy, physiology andimaging of the brain and explanations of its development and functioning. This section also introduces the public to the principles, structures and mysteries of the brain, the organ at the center of the exhibition. On the first and second floors, on the other hand, more than 110 objects encode centuries of attempts to understand the human brain. The selection includes historical artifacts, drawings, paintings, prints, and books that mark some of the most significant moments in a millennia-long journey of discovery through history, from Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations to the Italian Renaissance, the Japanese Edo Period, and the imaging techniques developed over the past three decades.

Thirty-two international fiction authors have also written literary texts in reference to the objects on display, revealing their social, political and personal histories. The objects and stories demonstrate and reproduce the human brain’s ability to collect and reprocess information. The stories were written to be performed by narrator George Guidall in short videos directed by Taryn Simon and produced by Fondazione Prada for the exhibition.

In the central room on the second floor, thirty-six neuroscientists, psychologists, neurolinguists, and philosophers from around the world are presented in a set of thirty-two screens. The scholars address issues related to neuroscience, investigating its philosophical and ethical dimensions. The Conversation Machine, videos and interviews assembled by Taryn Simon and produced by Fondazione Prada for the exhibition, is a self-organizing system that responds to itself like the human brain, incessantly constructing and assimilating its own order and disorder. In a series of video excerpts made from 140 hours of interviews, participants appear to listen and react to each other’s statements. Objects related to their work appear in flashes. Groups of scholars migrate from one screen to another, while others sit in prolonged, active silence. Like the brain, conversation develops following a logic of prediction and surprise. The project aims to delineate the perimento of consciousness, questions still unresolved by scientific research, certainties and unknowns in our process of understanding the human brain.

For info: foundationprada.org

Pictured is a layout of the exhibition Human Brains: It Begins with an Idea (Venice, Fondazione Prada). Photo by Marco Cappelletti.

Venice, Fondazione Prada presents an exhibition on the human brain. Involving artists, authors and scientists

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