Origins at Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig: Back to the dawn of time

No words. Well, hardly any. No words can describe how it felt to experience the Big Bang that created the universe. And in the Origins spectacular virtual time ride, there are hardly any words – just a few captions, in German. It’s immersive, exhilarating; almost literally mindblowing.

You may have seen the advance publicity for the exhibition, plastered across bus shelters in the city centre and along the route to the venue, the Kunstkraftwerk (“Art Power Station”) next to the Karl Heine Canal in Lindenau/Plagwitz. These posters are colourful, with weird creatures on them that look like primaeval prawns or underwater butterflies. Some of them look almost comical.

Don’t be fooled by these images. The exhibition doesn’t raise any laughs.

Instead, the audience at Origins gasps in awe and wonder as the vast indoor venue is transformed from a nineteenth-century gas-factory-turned-power-station into a faraway point in time and space where life began.

A few words explain the various stages in evolution. They are almost all dry, scientific labels that seem inadequate to describe the swirling, dancing, brightly-coloured digital art and electronic musical accompaniment. All the captions, that is, except one – Es werde Licht – “Let there be light.”

If you know your Bible, you will recognise these words: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:3-25).

Well, I was shocked. There I was, witnessing the Big Bang and classical Darwinian evolution, entirely based on secular, scientific research. Yet suddenly, here was God! Isn’t this a contradiction?

So I asked the Kunstkraftwerk founder and long-time University of Leipzig Professor of Medical Informatics Dr. Markus Löffler:

“Professor Dr. Löffler, you are a scientist. Do you actually believe in God the Creator, the Father of Mankind?”

“Yes of course I do, “ he replied. “That’s why we use those words ‘Let there be light’ and why the exhibition is divided into six sections, corresponding to the six days on which God created the world and all living things.”

That did not explain the contradiction to me, but maybe it does not need an explanation: The exhibition is not a factual documentation of the evolution of life on Earth, but rather an aesthetic interpretation of how the process might look and feel.

It’s rather lovely. In the power station’s former Turbine Hall, in half an hour, you can experience 100 million years of prehistory. Next door in the old Kettle Hall, huge planets – including our own Earth – hang from the roof, catching the ever-changing light, with solar flares, moonbeams and cosmic storms.

Upstairs you can enter a black hole and stumble through the intense darkness, then sink gratefully onto a flat beanbag and lie there, entranced by the massive video screen showing a volcano erupting, thunder and lightning, mist, rain and snow… whilst overhead, coloured laser beams illuminate weird, translucent, primitive life-forms.

Then there are some more words, after all. In traditional museum format, the six Origins stages are explained in scientifically correct but easily understandable text, in German and English.

Professor Löffler’s son, Paolo, is the genius who dreamed up the art show. I asked him where he found the inspiration and he modestly deferred to the artistic director, American video artist Markos Kay:

“I saw some of the work Markos had created and it was awesome. I knew I had to invite him to exhibit at Kunstkraftwerk. And when I described the venue to him, he was on fire (Feuer und Flamme).”

Kay’s other installations include The Flow and Quantum Fluctuations. He has worked with the European Parliament and the BBC, as well as commercial clients including Disney and Apple.

Grounded by illness, Kay could not attend the Origins opening party at the Kunstkraftwerk. But he sent a video message in which he expressed the hope that it might help us all to appreciate our planet, and work to protect it.

Along with Marcos Kay, 11 other digital artists used Artificial Intelligence and state-of-the-art image-generating software for Origins, of the sort pioneered in James Cameron’s epic Avatar animated blockbuster.

It is an international team, working across the globe. Only the music is the work of a single creator: Jesse Solomon Clark.

And it shows! The soundtrack is the only disappointment in this experience. The Big Bang was way too quiet. In fact, the Bang was so feeble that during the opening ceremony, the popping of a cork from a bottle of Sekt (sparking white wine) was clearly audible above the soundtrack. The rest was rather gloopy elevator music which – to my ears – failed to live up to the spectacular imagery.

What was I expecting? The music of the spheres? Holst’s The Planets? Also Sprach Zarathustra? The whole soundtrack from 2001: A Space Odyssey?

I don’t know. But this wasn’t it.

Only one part of the show had music that matched the pictures. And words – lots of words – narrated in English by the British national treasure Sir David Attenborough. He is the 98-year-old veteran BBC TV presenter of Life on Earth and many other natural history documentaries.

With Sir David as my guide and a Virtual Reality headset, I could truly immerse myself in the deep dark ocean.

He explained how the first feathery fronds and bloblike amoebas began to shape themselves into living plants and animals. Somehow this soundtrack kept track of the changing creatures and moods. It sounded dreamy at first and then, as the first predators began to scour the seabed, the tempo and the volume changed, rising to a crescendo of menace.

Still, overall the shortcomings of the soundscape were eclipsed many times over by the spectacular light show and the thrilling, awestruck excitement it generates. This feeling was personified on stage at the premiere by German astronaut-in-waiting Suzanna Randall, who sparkily presented an array of space scientists in a panel debate. She was visibly impressed by the Origins gallery tour.

“This exhibition reminds us of where we came from,” she enthused. “We are all, all of us, literally made of stardust. It’s so romantic, isn’t it? But a word of caution… cockroaches are also made of stardust!”

The Origins exhibition runs until June 2025 at Kunstkraftwerk, Saalfelder Str. 8, 04179 Leipzig – visit their website for more details.