Pascal Rousseau - L'encéphaloscope. L'utopie de la vision directe des pensées au passage du siècle.

Média Médiums

Using the whimsical short story, L'encéphaloscope published in 1900 by Kurd Lasswitz, one of the pioneers of science fiction in Germany, as a starting point, we will revisit one of the fantasms opened up by the discovery of X-Rays in 1895 – seeing, not only through the opacity of the body but directly into the cranium itself, in the absolute transparency of exchanges and the desire to free oneself from the obstacle that is mediation. Pascal Rousseau is professor of the History of Contemporary Art at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is a specialist of the historical avant-gardes and the origins of abstraction, as well as on the links between the imaginary, science and technology in contemporary culture (20th and 21st centuries). As a curator, he has organized Robert Delaunay. De l’impressionnisme à l’abstraction (Centre Pompidou, 1999) and Aux origines de l’abstraction. 1800-1914 (Musée d’Orsay, 2003) and more recently, Sous influence. Résurgences de l’hypnose dans l’art contemporain (Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, 2006) and Fabrice Hyber. Pasteur’Spirit (Institut Pasteur, 2010). He is currently preparing Cosa Mentale, an exhibition on the links between art and psychic cultures in the 20th century (Centre Pompidou, Metz, 2014).