Kunsthalle Bern is pleased to present a continuation of Swiss artist Marco Poloni’s series of works called The Majorana Experiment. Poloni was born in Amsterdam in 1962. He lives and works in Berlin and Geneva. Poloni uses different media, but primarily works with video and photography.
The Majorana Experiment deals with the story of the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana. Mysteriously, Majorana disappeared without a trace on a boat trip from Palermo to Naples in 1938. At that point, Majorana, an acquaintance of Heisenberg and Fermi, was only thirty-one years old and considered one of the most brilliant physicists of his generation. His most important papers concern nuclear physics and relativist quantum mechanics, with special consideration given to analyses of Neutrino Theory. Majorana’s last journey is the stuff of legends and conspiracy theories. Poloni interprets the physicist’s fate as a parable on the “secret history of the invention of nuclear weapons” – for one especially popular theory on Majorana’s disappearance posits that the Italian anticipated the nuclear arms race and, despairing, either killed himself or fled to another country. The latter possibility is especially prominent in Poloni’s work.
At this juncture, Poloni’s series comprises three films, a cycle of photographs and a historical document. Together, these works constitute, in Poloni’s words, an “open historical arrangement”. For the exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern, Poloni’s cycle of works will be complemented by a selection of new pieces which illuminate additional facets of the complex story of Majorana’s life.
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