And yet, in times when fact and fiction are becoming increasingly mixed up, mingling and mating, it is not so clear whether modern science itself is not a little crazy. Science, like everything that exists, can basically only be relative. No argumentation can be seamless, no knowledge absolute. Basically, this means that science and pataphysics cannot be separated from each other as clearly as is classically thought, indeed that science is always to some extent pataphysics and vice versa.

With this realisation, hantology or the hantological, as Derrida calls it, enters the stage - a conception of being that, in contrast to the classical ontological one, assumes a threshold-like being, a relative being. Even if such a being is traditionally understood as tragedy and drama, it is essentially happiness: for it is only because what is is limited that it can be with itself and with others. That which is, is relative, i.e. involved in multiple relationships.

This is the field of research of the Pegasus Institute for Pataphysics. As an institute for hantological pataphysics, it sees its task in the theoretical and practical investigation of actual and potential realities in order to document the diversity and eccentricity of the world.

The exhibition at esc reports on the institute's research activities since it was founded in 2013, drawing on the wealth of material that has accumulated in the PIP archive.

www.pip.iwf.at