Image courtesy Anton Zeilinger and Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna. On Friday, July 13, 2012, Anton Zeilinger, Professor of Physics at the University of Vienna, Director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and member of the Honorary Advisory Committee of dOCUMENTA (13), will bring to Kassel a fragment of a meteorite from the Campo del Cielo meteorite field in the Chaco province of northern Argentina, that has belonged to the collection of the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna since 2004.
This moment entangles Zeilinger’s experiments for dOCUMENTA (13) currently taking place in the Fridericianum, with the project of artists Guillermo Faivovich & Nicolás Goldberg for the exhibition. Faivovich & Goldberg’s proposal to temporarily transport to Kassel the largest meteorite of the Campo del Cielo field, the 37-ton Chaco, has remained unrealized due to the opposition of some representatives of indigenous communities in relation to rights of heritage. Should the project have been realized, it would have constituted a unique event—the heaviest single object to have been transported by humans on the planet.
Zeilinger has expressed the connections between his research and the Chaco meteorite project: “The meteorite shower entered the atmosphere around 4000 or 5000 years ago. The pueblos originarios called the site of impact pinguem nonraltá, which the Spanish translated into Campo del Cielo, because the people claimed that a mass had fallen from the sky. As late as around 1800, there were investigations and scientific publications by the French Academy claiming that there cannot be any meteorites because stones cannot fall from heaven.” However, Austria, where Zeilinger’s lab is located, was one of the first western countries to collect meteorites in the past, ignoring that generally acknowledged truth of scientific circles at the time (that meteorites from the sky could not exist). Therefore, the Vienna Naturhistorisches Museum has today one of the largest meteorite collections on earth. Furthermore, another connection to Zeilinger’s experiments is that his team is planning to put some equipment similar to the hardware presented in the Fridericianum on a satellite to orbit the earth and establish quantum communication.
Zeilinger explains, “We have a connection between natural stuff falling down and man-made stuff, because our satellite will also fall down to earth some day. Some of our most recent experiments have been done at astronomical observatories in the Canary Islands and various people there are fascinated by the connection of the quantum and the cosmos in our work.” 
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Artistic Director of dOCUMENTA (13), welcomes the »occupy« movement and appreciates their ability to care for the spaces they occupy. »I welcome the »doccupy« movement in Friedrichsplatz, which has grown over the last weeks. It continues the wave of democratic protests that have been spreading across many cities in the world. It enacts the possibility of re-inventing the use of public space and appears to me to be in the spirit of the moment and in the spirit of Joseph Beuys who marked documenta and its history significantly, embodying another idea of collective decision making and political responsibility through direct democracy. With this welcome, I also want to affirm the abilities of the people involved to care for the square, and to take responsibility for the space that they have the right to occupy, to consider the City of Kassel and the other visitors of documenta in a worldly spirit of germination and flourishing«. (Carolyn-Christov-Bakargiev) 
Ständehaus © Stadtmuseum Kassel 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, Documenta catalogs > dOCUMENTA NEWS. PROGRAM LAUNCH EMMANUEL ALLOA: AISTHESIS – OR WHY THERE IS NO THINKING WITHOUT PHANTASMS (English) Monday, June 18, 6 pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus, Ständeplatz 6-10
Open session, free entry Tuesday, June 19, 11 am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm, Friedrichsplatz 18
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required Emmanuel Alloa is a philosopher and an assistant professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of St. Gallen. Since 2010 he is the head of the philosophical dialogues in the theater of Gennevilliers (Paris). His research interests include German and French phenomenology, aesthetics, image theory and the question of embodied memory. He is the author of La résistance du sensible. Merleau-Ponty critique de la transparence (2011). WHAT IS THINKING? OR A TASTE THAT HATES ITSELF Conceived by German philosopher Christoph Menke in collaboration with Chus Martínez, and led by invited speakers, the seminar What is Thinking? Or a Taste that Hates Itself is a series of twelve two-part sessions focusing on the relationship between art and philosophy, between thinking and perceiving. It is an attempt to address the questions and the methods of philosophy for those who are curious but not necessarily close to the field. Each session is divided into a public lecture on Monday evenings in the Ständehaus, followed by a more intimate discussion seminar on Tuesday mornings in the Zwehrenturm of the Fridericianum. In September 1959, the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno gave a lecture on the occasion of documenta 2. A few days earlier, he had mentioned in a letter to Max Horkheimer his interest in visiting the exhibition, in seeing what culture—art—could do after the greatest collapse that the country and the world had ever experienced. This lecture, “Die Idee der neuen Musik” (The Idea of New Music), is of key significance to dOCUMENTA (13). It is read and commented upon by Albrecht Wellmer at the opening of the exhibition and by Carla Harryman at the close, as the inspiration and source for a reflection on the importance of deeds, like art, and thoughts, like philosophy, that are less driven by aims and results, than guided by values. The What is Thinking? seminar is a rigorous meditation on language, on meaning, on the limits and possibilities of skepticism, on imagination and politics, and on art and experience. It aims to contribute to an understanding of the importance of an art exhibition with the history and tradition of documenta, as a crucial space for ethical and aesthetic questions. The seminar sessions can be attended individually or in full. Texts and other materials for the sessions are available online. Please visit www.documenta.de for further information and booking details.
FULL PROGRAM EMMANUEL ALLOA: AISTHESIS – OR WHY THERE IS NO THINKING WITHOUT PHANTASMS (English) Monday, June 18, 6 pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus, Ständeplatz 6-10
Open session, free entry Tuesday, June 19, 11 am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm, Friedrichsplatz 18
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required Emmanuel Alloa is a philosopher and an assistant professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of St. Gallen. Since 2010 he is the head of the philosophical dialogues in the theater of Gennevilliers (Paris). His research interests include German and French phenomenology, aesthetics, image theory and the question of embodied memory. He is the author of La résistance du sensible. Merleau-Ponty critique de la transparence (2011).
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