The Florence Experiment. A project by Carsten Höller and Stefano Mancuso

From 19 April to 26 August 2018 Palazzo Strozzi will be hosting The Florence Experiment, a new site-specific project devised by celebrated German artist Carsten Höller and plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso, and curated by Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi Director Arturo Galansino, (He has mounted exhibitions by Bill Viola and Ai Weiwei, among others, since taking the helm of the art museum housed in a Renaissance palace in 2015) built around a fantastically innovative experiment studying the interaction between human beings and plants thanks to the installation of two monumental slides in the Renaissance courtyard and a special scientific laboratory connected to the façade of Palazzo Strozzi.

The Florence Experiment will be using some of the Palazzo Strozzi’s spaces in a thoroughly innovative manner and involving visitors in two very different experiments: A journey sliding down a descent from a height of 20 metres from the upper loggia in the Palazzo Strozzi’s courtyard, and two special cinema theatres in the Strozzina. The feelings of excitement, surprise, amusement and fear experienced by participants will be compared with the growth and reactions of various kinds of plants in order to study the empathy between plant organisms and human beings.

"Höller and The Florence Experiment manage to connect in an interesting way the internal and external spaces of the palace to expand our knowledge about ecology"

An entomologist and researcher before becoming an artist, Höller is well-known for his work midway between art, science and technology, with installations always designed strongly to involve the audience. He has cooperated on this unique project with Stefano Mancuso, one of the founders of the discipline known as plant neurobiology which concerns itself with the study of the intelligence of plants, analysed as complex beings endowed with astonishing sensitivity and the capacity to communicate with their surrounding environment through the chemical compositions that they manage to perceive and to emit.

With this project, so courageous and so special, Palazzo Strozzi will become a site of real contemporary experimentation and reflection, turning an architectural Renaissance masterpiece into a workshop of dialogue between art and science. Cooperation with Carsten Höller, one of the most important artists on the international scene, and with Stefano Mancuso, a Florentine scientist known worldwide for his work on plant neurobiology, offers us a spectacular opportunity to further Palazzo Strozzi's calling as a multidisciplinary space seeking to find ever new routes to involve and interacting with our visitors.

Arturo Galansino, Director General, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi