In 2026, LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura will continue to collaborate with IBSA Foundation, partner for scientific research in the SciArt SwitzerlAnd project.
Following Echoes from the Future, which presented potential future languages and visions during various shows and projects in 2025, in the new season the focus is shifting to the present. The spotlight is now on artificial intelligence and changes that are already under way.
Quantum intelligence is the new theme for the LAC performing arts season. It looks into one of the most pressing issues of our time: how our notion of humanity is affected by artificial intelligence and the latest scientific developments.
The theme for 2026: Quantum Intelligence
LAC and IBSA Foundation’s exploration of quantum intelligence is all part of their investigation in recent years into the relationship between art and science. Their journey is now leading them to the frontiers of quantum physics and the emerging challenges of artificial intelligence, offering highly topical food for thought. It is a chance to contemplate one of the most pressing issues of our time: the impact of intelligent technology and new scientific paradigms on how we see humanity.
IBSA Foundation has been promoting interdisciplinary reflection on matters relating to scientific innovation for years, with a growing interest in artificial intelligence. By supporting this new initiative, it is stepping up its commitment to ensuring the big changes that are taking place are more accessible to everyone.
Understanding a changing world thanks to performing arts
The performing arts offer outstanding opportunities to explore the field in question. Thanks to their immediacy, experience-based nature and immense narrative potential, plays, films and performances help to make complex scientific concepts more tangible. They can take algorithms, models and theoretical scenarios and make them into pictures, shapes and stories.
As part of SciArt SwitzerlAnd, the partnership with LAC has taken the shape of a research and outreach workshop. Intertwining art and science, it presents the community with cultural takes on the changes that are occurring.
Directed by Carmelo Rifici, the LAC performing arts season blends a range of visions and forms of expression. Complementing them are LAC edu’s cultural mediation activities, which aim to spark debate and conversations with the public.
Events
Wednesday 18 February 2026 will see the first of a series of events, including plays, films, presentations and workshops.
After the performance on Wednesday 18 February, Łukasz Twarkowski will talk to Maddalena Giovannelli (USI) in English.
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In association with JFC cinema – IRIDE Lugano.
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LAC Hall (free entry). Presentation of Our Minds Under Siege: How to Avoid Being Manipulated in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Edizioni Casagrande, 2026), a book about our relationship with AI and the ways in which people are influenced in the digital world.
Corriere del Ticino is the Media Partner for this presentation, which is promoted by Edizioni Casagrande.
Organised by L’ideatorio in Cadro (CHF 5 – advanced booking required). A workshop for people of all ages, providing a chance to reflect on the capabilities and limitations of artificial intelligence, and its role in everyday life.
Iride Cinema (free entry – advanced booking required). This film by Spike Jonze – winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay – looks at the boundaries between relationships, technology and consciousness from a contemporary viewpoint. It raises key questions about the nature of consciousness, love and relationships in an era when technology can seem more and more “alive”.
In association with JFC cinema – IRIDE Lugano.
LAC Theatre.
A show by the Nicole Seiler Company. The choreographer from Zurich – a winner at the Swiss Performing Arts Awards in 2021 – is making her debut in Lugano with a performance for two dancers that pushes artificial thinking to the limit.
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