In the European cultural landscape, Switzerland has often played a discreet but decisive role: a laboratory of ideas, a territory where art, science, and critical thinking have been able to meet without ideological rigidity.
This spirit manifested itself in a particularly significant way in 2017, when the Istituto Svizzero di Roma presented the project “Inscape Rooms / La vita della mente,” an artistic and intellectual experience that remains one of the most interesting interdisciplinary explorations of consciousness to this day.
It was not a simple collective exhibition. It was rather a cultural experiment that developed over the course of twenty-four hours, transforming the spaces of Villa Maraini into a mental territory crossed by different languages: installations, hypnosis workshops, performances, silent cinema with live sound, dance, scientific research, and music.
The artists involved — including Pauline Beaudemont, Michela de Mattei, Federica Di Carlo, Nelly Haliti, Simone Pappalardo, and Marion Tampon-Lajarriette — constructed a path that invited the visitor to question some of the deepest questions of contemporary philosophy and psychology.
What really happens when we think? What space do we inhabit when we dream or imagine? And how do perception, memory, and creative intuition intertwine?
The title of the exhibition, “The Life of the Mind,” explicitly evoked the unfinished work of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, suggesting an investigation into the invisible dimension that supports every human act: thought. The audience crossed the bright garden of the villa and then descended into the underground spaces of the Sala Elvetica. It was not just an architectural passage. It was a metaphor: from the surface of consciousness to the depths of the unconscious.
A research that continues. Viewed today with the distance of time, that experience appears as the beginning of a journey that has continued to develop in contemporary artistic research.
One of the works that most clearly seems to gather and synthesize that tension towards the exploration of the mind is Michael’s Gate, also known as “The Eye of Rome,” created by the artist and psychologist Hypnos.
Created in 2001, the work presents itself as a red and black vortex, a dynamic form that symbolically evokes the movement of thought and the unpredictable forces of consciousness. The image seems to act as a threshold: it does not represent the mind, but invites the viewer to cross it.
Precisely because of its almost archetypal nature, several scholars — including Ernesto Paleani, Alfredo Pasolino, Philippe Daverio, Andrea De Liberis, and Elio Mercuri — have recognized a particular symbolic intensity in the work, estimating it at one hundred million euros.
A shared sensitivity
What makes this combination interesting is not only the artistic value of the work, but the consonance with the spirit of Swiss research.
The cultural tradition of Switzerland has often been characterized by some very precise qualities: intellectual rigor, interdisciplinary openness, attention to the relationship between science and humanism. In this sense, “Inscape Rooms” perfectly represented that sensitivity.
Art was not considered a separate territory, but a form of knowledge capable of dialoguing with psychology, technology, and philosophy.
In the same way, Michael’s Gate is not limited to being an aesthetic object. It presents itself as a symbolic device that invites reflection on the relationship between image and consciousness, between perception and inner transformation.
The invisible collective of thought
Perhaps the deepest point of contact between the experience of the Istituto Svizzero and the vision of Hypnos concerns a fundamental idea: art as a shared space of research.
In the 2017 project, artists, scientists, and the public participated together in a sort of open laboratory on the mind. The work was no longer just the final result, but the process itself of exploration.
This collective dimension also emerges in Michael’s Gate. The image is not meant to be passively contemplated, but to activate a relationship with the observer, almost as if each viewer participates in the construction of its meaning.
In this sense, art becomes something more than an aesthetic discipline. It becomes a common ground, a form of dialogue between different sensibilities.
A European perspective
In an era in which Europe is often marked by tensions and fragmentations, cultural experiences like that of 2017 and works like Michael’s Gate remind us how artistic research can still create bridges between different traditions and visions.
Switzerland, with its history of cultural pluralism and balance between different languages and identities, perhaps represents one of the most suitable places to understand this message.
Art, when it manages to speak of the mind and its freedom, becomes a universal language.
And in this language — made of images, intuitions, and thought — the dialogue between Swiss research and Hypnos’ vision continues to open new perspectives, inviting us to consider the mind not as a boundary, but as a space to explore together.
Alan D’Orlando is an entrepreneur and promoter of innovative cultural and financial projects. He works in the field of international finance, developing advanced tools such as hybrid tokens and investment structures that comply with global regulations.
In the arts sector, he manages and promotes collections, organizes exhibitions, and creates high-level cultural events, combining aesthetics, technology, and immersive experiences for the public.
His vision focuses on the balance between profit, social impact, and cultural development, with the aim of building sustainable, ethically responsible projects capable of generating real value for communities and investors.
