Here Comes the Sun
Art, Energy and Natural Intelligence
Location: Cercle Cité, Ratskeller exhibition space (rue du Curé)
We have built systems of extraordinary complexity to predict, control and optimize our world. Artificial intelligence, we are told, will solve our greatest challenges. Yet the more intelligent our machines become, the more we seem to forget the oldest forms of intelligence surrounding us: that of the sun broadcasting its energy with perfect consistency for billions of years, that of marine microorganisms perfecting their luminous architectures. Intelligence is not a human invention.
It also exists in human communities when they choose cooperation over competition, when they dare to imagine other possibilities together. For imagination is that uniquely human faculty that allows us to understand through speculative leaps, through empathy and creativity.
The three works in this exhibition explore these entanglements. Through the visual languages of cinema – storytelling, editing, power of the moving image –, they activate our imagination and make visible the invisible intelligences that sustain life on this planet.
Alice Bucknell projects us into Staring at the Sun, a near future where geoengineering – technologies aimed at deliberately modifying the climate – has become our last gamble with planetary systems. The film maps the territory where technological intervention meets ecological consequences, where human vanity confronts the complexity of climate systems.
Solar Protocol by Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson and Benedetta Piantella demonstrates that a solar-powered internet is possible. This work reveals that technology is never merely technical: Solar Protocol functions only through a global network of volunteers. The system is deliberately fragile, dependent on human care, and acknowledges its dependence on both solar cycles and cooperation.
In Radiolaria by James Bridle, the silica skeletons of radiolarians – these microorganisms that have spent millions of years perfecting geometric forms that capture light – are superimposed onto solar panels. This visual encounter is a revelation: evolution is the most sophisticated research program on Earth.
These works expand the territory of what we can imagine. They show us that innovation does not mean domination, that technology can integrate into ecological and social systems, that the intelligence we need is already here – in sunlight, in microorganisms, in communities working together. It is up to us to learn to listen, to participate, and to let ourselves be guided by the intelligences that surround us!
Françoise Poos and Vincent Crapon
Elektron
Elektron receives support from the City of Esch-sur-Alzette
Opening
Thursday 5 February 2026 at 6:00 PM
Free admission, no registration required
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Free guided tours every Saturday at 3:00 PM
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07.02.2026 (FR)
14.02.2026 (EN)
21.02.2026 (LU/DE)
28.02.2026 (FR)
07.03.2026 (EN)
14.03.2026 (LU/DE)
21.03.2026 (FR)
28.03.2026 (EN)
04.04.2026 : curator tour by Françoise Poos and Vincent Crapon (FR)
