The LabOratorium exhibition being staged during the festival scrutinizes the alchemists of our time and the forces that impel them to do what they do. One spontaneously associates the word alchemy with the—eternally frustrating—handiwork of transforming base metal into gold, the endless search for the Philosopher’s Stone, or even with the likes of Paulo Coelho—quirky geniuses in antique laboratories full of odd apparatuses and bubbling flasks full of spooky substances.
