For more than twenty years, Adelin Schweitzer has been carving out a unique niche in the world of immersive and performing arts. Founder of the Deletere Laboratories in Marseille (see our previous interview), he strives to divert technology from its expected uses and transform it into a critical and poetic space. His most recent work, LE TEST SUTHERLAND, presented at L.E.V. Matadero 2025, takes this radical approach even further: an experience in which we learn to “see less in order to perceive more.”
LE TEST SUTHERLAND, a genesis
Adelin Schweitzer readily recounts how this project was a test of perseverance. Four years of work, research, doubts, and a production process fraught with obstacles. “The CNC refused to support me because there were no images in the project. It’s almost comical: we’re talking about a work that questions the place of images in our lives.” The artist smiles as he mentions this contradiction, aware that his approach never fits into the usual frameworks. “I don’t make films, theater, or VR as it is conceived in the industry. Of course, it’s confusing. But that’s also what interests me: working on the margins, where things are not yet named.”
THE SUTHERLAND TEST was born out of a desire to reverse the usual relationship between vision and perception. Rather than offering viewers a stream of images, the artist chose to take away their sight. “We live in an age where everything is seen, where everything must be shown, captured, archived. I wanted to create a space where we could exist differently, without sight as our central reference point.” The setup is simple in appearance: sixteen participants, a headset called BUD (Black Up Display) that limits vision, and a sensory deprivation protocol. But behind this simplicity lies a subtle, almost ritualistic mechanism, where each viewer becomes an actor in a collective whole. “With fewer than eight people, it doesn’t work. It’s no longer a group, it’s a juxtaposition of individuals. With sixteen, a tension is created, a kind of density that changes perception. That’s where the ritual takes shape.
A proposition of alternate reality
The second part of the experiment takes place in heavy silence, punctuated by the actors’ instructions, the participants’ movements, and their breathing. They feel their way forward, touching and brushing against each other, sometimes losing their way. Gradually, the absence of images opens up other sensory channels: touch, hearing, imagination. “What I love is the moment when the brain flips. When people take off the headset, some really believe they have gone blind. It’s a wonderful confusion, because it shows how much vision dominates us. By removing it, we rediscover a form of raw presence.”
The performance is organized by VESM, a transdisciplinary organization dedicated to transcendence technologies, invented by the artist. “I like to create contexts. VESM is a pretext for blurring the lines. You don’t know if you’re watching a performance, a high-tech startup demonstration, or an initiation ritual. It’s this ambiguity that makes the experience active: people are constantly wondering what they’re experiencing.” Underneath its high-tech protocol, THE SUTHERLAND TEST actually acts as a ceremony of unlearning. The audience detaches itself from a world saturated with images to return to a more organic, slower, more fragile perception.
A use of hybrid technology
“I hijack technology and turn it against itself,” he says with a quiet laugh. “What I do is create self-defense manuals for dealing with digital saturation. We’ve lost touch with our senses. The XR industry loves to talk about innovation, the metaverse, productivity. I talk about the body, contact, vulnerability. It’s not very marketable, but it’s more real.” The artist embraces this stance of gentle resistance: using the tools of the future to relearn how to be present.
THE SUTHERLAND TEST is not just a performance, it is a physical simulation. “When you are deprived of sight, you are forced to rely on others. It creates a strange, almost animalistic solidarity. You can feel the group breathing. It is not an individual experience like most VR projects: it is a collective device where everyone depends on each other. It is augmented reality in the literal sense: the presence of others increases your relationship with the world.”
THE SUTHERLAND TEST @ L.E.V. Matadero 2025
In Madrid, the reception exceeded his expectations. “The audience immediately understood the message. There was nothing to explain. They left shaken, some in tears, others laughing nervously. What’s powerful is that everyone experienced the same thing, but each in their own way. There was no speech to remember, just an experience to go through.” For Adelin Schweitzer, this clarity of message without mediation is a victory. “When people feel before they understand, it means the work is right.”
The artist remains clear-headed about the conditions for creativity in France. “As soon as you don’t fit into a box—theater, cinema, digital arts—you become invisible. LE TEST SUTHERLAND took a long time to come into being because it was ‘neither quite VR nor quite a performance.’ But little by little, the lines are shifting. The DRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur supported us (through the ADSV decentralized performing arts aid program), and we are now working to have the deletere laboratories recognized as a company in their own right, both theatrical and immersive.” For him, it is not a fight against institutions, but a quest for recognition for new forms. “We must stop compartmentalizing. Hybridity is our reality. It is in the interstices that the most vibrant forms are born.”
In his vision, technology is never an end in itself, but a tool at the service of human experience. “I don’t believe in the idea of escapism that is often sold with VR. It’s not a tool for fleeing the world, but for looking at it differently. I want people to come out of my works more aware of themselves and others, not more disconnected.” For Schweitzer, the viewer is always at the center. “They are my raw material. When I design a work, I think about how the viewer’s body will engage with it. I create situations that don’t just tell a story, but bring it to life.”
Building next-generation collective experiences
THE SUTHERLAND TEST is a logical continuation of his previous projects, such as #ALPHALOOP and ALTERED STATE, while marking a more radical step forward. “This project was a turning point. It made me realize that I was ready to go even further in terms of physical exertion, slowness, and embracing fragility. I believe we are reaching a maturity of gesture.“ The audience’s experience, the reaction in Madrid, and the collective energy surrounding the project have given the artist a renewed taste for risk. ”I no longer want to protect myself. I want to continue making works that bring into play the body, perception, fear, and doubt. That is the true terrain of artistic research.”
Today, Adelin Schweitzer is already working on two new projects. “There’s ALTERED STATES, a collective XR experience between dream, code, and perception, where space reacts to human presence, and DISNOV_XR_2000 – JE SUIS SI // SILICON VALLEY, a solo performance where the performer, lost between keynote and mystical crisis, confronts the ghosts of Californian ideology.
I continue to explore the idea that technology is not bad in itself, but that it is the way we integrate it into our lives that makes it toxic or liberating.” These works extend the reflection of THE SUTHERLAND TEST, shifting it to other forms and contexts. “I believe we need artists who slow down the pace, who question our reflexes and our automatic responses. This is my way of campaigning: making art a space for shared experience, not consumption.”
When asked what this adventure taught him, Adelin Schweitzer pauses for a moment, then smiles. “Seeing less means perceiving more. That has become my motto. To rediscover reality, sometimes you have to close your eyes. We spend our days staring at screens, searching for signals. I suggest we turn them off for a moment. Just to see what remains. “
Next session for the SUTHERLAND TEST, at the Comédie de Reims in spring 2026.
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