ART CITIES: Berlin-Laure Prouvost – dreamideamachine ART VIEW

Laure Prouvost’s artistic output consistently returns to themes of escape into unfamiliar worlds or imaginings of unexpected alternative environments. A strong narrative impulse propels her practice, resulting in immersive, transmedial installations with interwoven story lines that combine fiction and reality. Her videos, installations, paintings and tapestries unhinge commonplace and expected connections between language, image, and perception.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: LAS Art Foundation Archive

Laure Prouvost’s “WE FELT A STAR DYING” is a newly commissioned installation at Kraftwerk Berlin that explores quantum phenomena and their sensitivity to cosmic and planetary forces. 2025 marks a century since quantum physics became established and today its applications are predicted to enact a paradigm shift in our world. Laure Prouvost, says “It has been a wonderful, crazy experience of mental exercises, gatherings and conversations to trigger the switch all together from our Newtonian habits of translating the world to a quantum reality, with its micro free spirit and entanglement. What this project has opened is infinite. I am very grateful to have had the chance to work with experts from all over the world to open a discussion on quantum consciousness. This exploration has been important for my practice. LAS pushes the boundary between art and science in depth that is rare. This project has made me more quantum 😉 These words, this ink, letters, these pixels are infinite quantum effects that are one with us. The exhibition wants to feel and translate that, in the hope to entangle us all in a preferred state and place.” “WE FELT A STAR DYING” follows Prouvost’s rare access to a quantum computer and is born out of two years of research and development. The project grows out of the artist’s conversations with philosopher Tobias Rees and scientist Hartmut Neven. The collaboration allowed Laure Prouvost to access a quantum computer, and to experiment with a new, specially-developed AI model using data recorded from quantum computations. “WE FELT A STAR DYING” is a multi-sensory and immersive environment, including video and sound developed with a quantum computer, as well scent and sculptural elements tuned to quantum phenomena. The project merges Prouvost’s playful and intuitive approach with the counterintuitive logic of quantum physics and represents a new line of inquiry in the artist’s oeuvre. Presented over 3,500 square metres of the former power station Kraftwerk Berlin, the commission offers a dynamic reflection on technological development today.

Stepping away from traditional linear narratives, Laure Prouvost crafts sensual environments laden with playful mistranslation that open a space for the viewer to grapple with the unstable relationship between imagination and reality. The elasticity of the written word comprises a central element of Prouvost’s practice, stating: “Words for me are very visually powerful, because with words people create their own vision. I am just hinting and suggesting possibilities, the audience is making its own image in its head. It is also about misunderstanding, misinterpreting, miscommunicating – words also suggesting failure and other senses.” After graduating from Saint Martins, Laure Prouvost worked as an assistant to the artist John Latham, who she describes as “more like a grandfather than my real grandfather”.She has exhibited at Tate Britain and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Prouvost was awarded the biennial MaxMara Art Prize for Women in 2011 and her work has appeared in the private contemporary art collection Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy. That same year, Prouvost was the principal prize winner at the 57th Oberhausen Film Festival. Prouvost won the Turner Prize in 2013 for an installation named “Wantee” made in response to the artist Kurt Schwitters. In a tea party setting a film describes a fictional relationship between Prouvost’s grandfather and Schwitters. The work is named in reference to the habit of Schwitters’ partner of asking guests if they “want tea”. The panel described the work as “outstanding for its complex and courageous combination of images and objects in a deeply atmospheric environment”.Prouvost was generally considered a surprise winner.In 2014, Prouvost staged her first solo museum exhibition in the United States at the New Museum, titled For Forgetting. In 2018, Prouvost created an installation for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris titled Ring Sing and drink for Trespassing.In 2024, Prouvost was among the 18 artists selected by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to create installations for the John F. Kennedy International Airport’s new Terminal 6, set to open in 2026.

Info: Kraftwerk Berlin, Köpenicker Str. 70, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 21/2-4/5/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 15:00-21:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-20:00, https://kraftwerkberlin.de/