Echoes from the Future - Science, Ethics and the Arts

IBSA Foundation is the scientific research partner of LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura and the collaboration will be developed, for the 2024/25 season, within the thematic path "Science, Ethics and Art."

LAC Lugano 's performing arts season offers the opportunity to look to the past, great literature, history and the tradition of theater to address themes that allow reflections on the present, through visions that project into a plausible future.
Scientific research, social struggles and achievements, wars and uprisings, and reflections on human nature are among the themes that will surface more or less markedly in the performances and events offered, in order to understand the present and, in being together, hypothesize possible landscapes in which to build the future.

Science, Ethics and Art

The present time suggests themes for reflection on the relationship between science and ethics, particularly with regard to the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence. Science and ethics pose questions, and art has always supported these reflections. An opportunity to stop and think in a discourse more relevant than ever.

As part of this research, the collaboration between IBSA Foundation and LAC is implemented through several meetings, performances and events dedicated to the relationship between Ethical Science and Art:

• Oct. 24 at 12:30 p.m. in Lunch at the Theater. A (digital) meeting on theater philosopher Silvio Joller will explore some of the themes suggested by Durrenmatt's play. More information and tickets here.

• Oct. 26 at 2 p.m. LAC Room 3 will host the first appointment of the Tricot Cafécycle Knitting and chatting about theater. In an informal atmosphere, knitting with Agata Pellandini will be an opportunity to plumb the literature connected to The Physicists and learn more about theSwiss writer, playwright and painter .
  More information and tickets here.
• Nov. 5 and 6 The Physicists By Friedrich Dürrenmatt, directed by Igor Horvat
  After La bottega del caffè, presented in the 2021/22 season, Igor Horvat returns to directing with Dürrenmatt's The Physicists, whose translation he also signs: a grotesque (but not too much) tragicomedy straddling detective story, spy story and reflection on the future of human beings.
  More information and tickets here.

• Nov. 6 at 6 p.m. in the LAC Hall Igor Horvat will converse with Nadine Murgida spokesperson for the Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel (CDN). The meeting will be an opportunity to celebrate 25 years of the Center's activities as well as to learn more about one of the most important Swiss writers of the last century.
  More information and tickets here.

• Feb. 8, 2025 at 11:00 a.m. Stefano Mancuso, botanist and professor of general arboriculture and plant ethology at the University of Florence, will talk about communication networks among plant beings in the context of global sustainability.
  
• Feb. 17, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. in the LAC Hall Guido Tonelli, physicist and popularizer, will be the protagonist of a meeting on the topic of Art and Science: a story of surprising relationships.
• March 29, 2025 at 2 p.m. LAC's Mezzanine hosts a new Tricot café event: Moby Dick. Chatting about theater while sipping coffee and knitting, participants will discuss the issues addressed by Elio De Capitani in his Moby Dick on Trial, an Italian version of Orson Welles' rewrite of Melville's play.
  More information and tickets here.
• April 5 and 6, 2025 Moby Dick at the Trial by Orson Welles, adaptation Herman Melville, direction Elio De Capitani
  Orson Welles rewrote Melville's Moby Dick in the mid-1950s, creating a new epic masterpiece with a Shakespearean feel. The Italian version is brought to success by Teatro dell'Elfo, directed by Elio De Capitani who, as an Ahab "introverted and lost in his obsession," leads a 'crew' of ten magnificent actors and musicians.
  More information and tickets here.
  
  

What is SciArt SwitzerlAnd?
SciArt SwitzerlAnd is a project by IBSA Foundation for scientific research, in partnership with LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura and MASI Lugano (Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana).

Using different event formats and digital products, SciArt SwitzerlAnd intends to focus on artistic creations that have been transformed as a result of interactions with scientists, new discoveries and research institutions.

The public will be offered a look at fascinating projects, the products of different dimensions intersecting, and will be able to listen to the voices of artists and scientists explaining the extent to which spheres that are so different can mutually influence one another.