Back in 2017, an asteroid named ‘Oumuamua passed through our solar system at almost 200,000 miles per hour. According to analysis of the rogue space rock, it wasn’t moving like anything we’d ever seen before, prompting theories that it was the product of an alien intelligence: maybe a space probe, or even a ship from another star system. In the end, we’re still not sure what was going on up there, but maybe it looked something like Liminals, Pierre Huyghe’s new exhibition at Berghain.

Commissioned by LAS, the French artist’s 55-minute film follows a mysterious, humanlike figure with a void for a face, as they find their feet against a barren rocky landscape – be it an asteroid, a distant exoplanet, or a remote region of Earth. According to the artist, it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, it’s a place “where there is no beginning or end, no inside or outside, only an incessant dance of matter” with space for infinite possibilities. That said, the protagonist doesn’t actually do much, in the traditional sense of the word: seemingly born out of the rocks themselves, they thrash around to find the limits of their body, slowly explore the sparse environment, and stare into a yawning void at the edge of reality (something, I think, we can all relate to).

These adventures in a “realm outside time and space” are blown up on a nine-metre screen in the vast Halle am Berghain. Then, there’s the sound. Liminals is “scored like an epic,” says Carly Whitefield, curator and head of programme at LAS, and partly draws from experiments with quantum computers, transforming their atomic architecture into tangible sound design. In the notorious halls of the Berlin club, this produces some bone-shaking effects.

The quantum doesn’t stop at the score, though. As the latest entry in the S+T+ARTS Prize-winning Sensing Quantum programme by LAS – following a monumental 2025 exhibition by Laure Prouvost – Huyghe’s film also takes visual inspiration from contemporary breakthroughs in quantum technology, courtesy of conversations with quantum physicist Tommaso Calarco and philosopher Tobias Rees. This shows up in the abstract output of an AI model based on quantum noise.

On a more philosophical note, quantum uncertainty serves as the basis for the film’s  modern mythmaking, where the void becomes a metaphor for the “radical outside” of human subjectivity – often, the landscape itself is equally hard to pin down. “A lot of the images never settle,” says Whitefield. “You see what looks like rock formations on the horizon, a bit hazy or obscure, but they resist being distinguished. Pierre wants to create conditions where you need to sit in the space and and grapple with this image that won’t resolve itself.” This isn’t always easy, or even necessarily pleasurable (there’s a reason Netflix doesn’t air 55-minute art films about quantum uncertainty). “We really have this human urge for the work to resolve,” she adds. “I want to up the contrast, because it’s tough to sit in that space and allow yourself into a more speculative mode of perception.”

Of course, artists and scientists alike have been trying to access the “radical outside” of human perception – reaching into the void, so to speak – for a long time, and it remains to be seen whether it’s even possible to rewire our brains in this way. It can also kick up a lot of controversial issues. Take, for example, the lone figure in Liminals, which exists in a white, naked, female-presenting body, complete with high-resolution freckles, bruises, and a C-section scar, which are explained as attributes of the human dancer who was scanned into the piece via a game engine. Critical reactions to this figure have ranged from confusion about its role in a contemporary creation myth that’s supposed to reach beyond the human experience, to more straightforward accusations of misogyny (see: a cutting Substack post by writer and curator Anicka Meier).

“For Pierre, it’s not about a female human figure at all,” says Bettina Kames, director and co-founder of LAS. “Obviously it’s a female figure, but it’s not about that. For him, it’s a canvas. The work is more about this circle of creation, existence, emergence. In the end, he decided that certain concepts or ideas are stronger than saying, ‘I’m not using female figure. I’m shying away from this because it’s too straightforward a choice.’” Still, when the figure begins to penetrate the hole where their face would be with a particularly protruding rock, it’s hard not to read some sort of psychosexual narrative into it. Maybe I’m just projecting.

Controversial or not, the uncanny effects of Huyghe’s smooth-skinned protagonist do place Liminals within a broader body of work that revolves around his interest in non-human – or more-than-human – life. For example, Whitefield points to his (also polarising) 2014 artwork Human Mask that follows a masked monkey as she waits tables in a Japanese restaurant, which lies deserted after the 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima. “The moment you put this human mask on, we start to say, ‘Oh, they’re being so human,’ and thinking about how that acts on you,” she explains. “With [Liminals] he’s also placed a human figure in this otherwise uncertain world to ask if we can relate to it, which may or may not be easy, because it’s quite an alienating world.”

In fact, as the real world starts to feel increasingly alienating and technology pushes the speed of change past human comprehension, exploring how we can or can’t relate to our new realities seems like a pretty solid mission statement for art in general. For LAS, this is essentially the “raison d’être” – to get artists involved in shaping the possibilities of emerging technologies like quantum or AI, but also in developing a language that can be used to question or criticise.

“It’s really critical for artists to get in and play around, and also be at the table regarding policy,” says Whitefield. Returning to the topic of quantum tech, she adds: “Many people have encountered the word through sci-fi, or geopolitical headlines about the race, but there’s isn’t such a broad public discourse.” Here’s where art can step in, and offer a “completely different entry point” for a whole new group of people to have input. Because one thing’s for sure: we’re heading into the void either way.

Liminals is on show at Halle am Berghain until March 8, 2026.