Arts event

In this exhibition, artists responded in strikingly different ways to the themes that were explored in the Experimentality programme. Some artworks explored how experimentation blurs the boundary between truth and deception, and between enlightenment and cruelty, in disturbing ways.

In a special event organised by Litfest in collaboration with Lancaster University's Experimentality programme, Scarlett Thomas read from and discussed her latest novel, Our Tragic Universe.

'I was reading about the end of the universe when I got a text message from my friend Libby . . .' If Kelsey Newman's theory about the end of time is true, we are all going to live forever. But for Meg – locked in a dead-end relationship and with a deadline long-gone for a book that she can't write – this thought fills her with dread. Meg is lost in a labyrinth of her own devising. But could there be an important connection between a wild beast living on Dartmoor, a ship in a bottle, the science of time, a knitting pattern for the shape of the universe and the Cottingley Fairies? Or is her life just one long chain of coincidences? Smart, entrancing and buzzing with big ideas, Our Tragic Universe is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, and how a story might just save your life.

In this talk, Charlie Gere considered the role of the hand in experimentation, arguing that it is the hand that is the most experimental organ, engaged as it is with touch, grasp and feel, beyond what can be seen.

Bill Woodrow is a British sculptor who was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1986, and exhibited on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2000.

What happens if ...?

An exhibition of experimental objects and actions by artists and designers from the UK, Switzerland, Hungary, Israel and the USA: Simon Blackmore, Attila Csörgo, Jerome Harrington, Michael Kontopoulos, Material Beliefs, Ariel Schlesinger, Roman Signer, Thomas Thwaites, Bill Woodrow and Stuart Walker.

Piotr Woycicki, Flash Flood, 2009This was the exhibition of the winning photographs from the Experimentality Photography Competition, in which local artists were invited to respond to the title ‘The Experiment’.

As part of the collaboration between the Experimentality programme and the Nuffield Theatre, the triple award-winning ENGLAND traveled the trade routes of art and human beings through space and across borders.

The Gavin Bryars EnsembleNothing Like the Sun
The Gavin Bryars Ensemble