Inside

– Can we fit a black hole into a bedroom?

– Absolutely. It can be about as heavy as Jupiter and still fit. 

This is a collaborative artistic experiment between the theoretical physicist Marek Liška and theatre director Olga Krása-Ryabets. We are designing an immersive physical workshop in which we create an imaginary black hole in a city apartment. Through this, we are exploring how lived space is altered by the absolute nature of black holes and what role the imagination plays in our experience of space – both small and large-scale.

To achieve this, we rely on imaginative processes which are integral to both theatrical performance and theoretical physics. Using the imagination as a shared starting point, we expose the participants to the counterintuitive behavior of the space near a black hole. In practice, this looks like a 30 – 50 minute workshop where we take the participants on a narrated, meditative exploration of a black hole in their home and then ask them to create a visual map of what they experienced.

The workshops are ongoing and we welcome participants. Sessions can take place in person (Prague) or virtually (wherever you are), individually or in small groups – the only requirement is that we conduct them in a home. Please let us know if you would like to arrange a session and contribute to our research! Feel free to contact one of us directly or use our Contact Form.

Preliminary results of our experiment have been shared at the Perspektivy teatrologie conference in Olomouc, May 2025.

BIOS 

Dr. Olga Krása-Ryabets – see here

Dr. Marek Liška is a Czech theoretical physicist specialising in black hole thermodynamics, unimodular gravity and low energy quantum gravitational effects. He is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Marek holds a PhD in theoretical physics and astronomy from the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Charles University, Prague. His dissertation is titled Thermodynamics of Spacetime: corrections from the quantum realm.