Centre Pompidou Research Articles

Telematic music transmission, resistance and touch

ABSTRACT This article retraces the history of telematic performance from early videophone experiments by the Electronic Café in the 1980s, through a series of ambitious digital art installations at museums like the Centre Pompidou. Onto this history, I map a series of netmusic projects I initiated in this period, from ISDN performances at the Sonar Festival to my installation Global String at Ars Electronica. This sets the context for collaborative online performances held during the COVID pandemic with artists like Paul Sermon and the Chicks on Speed. I finish by describing the Hybrid Live project connecting Goldsmiths and Iklectik Art Labs in London with Stanford University’s CCRMA and SFJazz in California. I describe the low latency audio transport used, the importance of audiovisual synchronisation and the computer vision abstractions resulting in a London-New York remote dance performance. By situating current work in these histories, and closely examining the qualities of the network necessary for the transmission of a sense of embodied experience – and therefore trust – we understand that network performance occurs in its own space, one distinct from physical co-presence.

“I Want to Be Involved in Constructing the World”: In Discussion with Malala Andrialavidrazana

On Sunday, February 26, 2023, Naminata Diabate met over Zoom with visual artist Malala Andrialavidrazana, whose most recent works have been exhibited at the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Based on extensive in situ as well as bibliographic and archival research, Andrialavidrazana's visual compositions offer the possibility of alternative forms of storytelling and world-making. In this interview, the artist, whose interest spans centuries and all corners of the globe, shared how the political and racial landscape of her country of origin, Madagascar, and her family background shape her artistic expression and her place in the world.

The Development of Steel Construction with the Innovation Brought by High-Tech Architecture

Steel is arguably one of the most popular materials in the world today, with a strong, reliable, flexible and sustainable structure that is used as the primary structural material in most of the world's infrastructure and buildings today. As a highly malleable and growing structure, the way architects and structural engineers have used steel has evolved over the centuries and, as technology evolves, the use of steel in the architectural world is likely to evolve in the future. The article wants to take the famous cases of steel buildings as an entry point to develop the impact of steel application on modern architectural design and innovation. Three case studies are used to illustrate how steel structures can meet the needs of modern architecture and achieve creative breakthroughs in architectural and structural design. The three cases are the Chicago Home Insurance Building, the HSBC Building in Hong Kong and the Centre Pompidou in France. This paper deeply elucidates and systematically summarizes how structural designers break through tradition and seek innovation when existing structural technology cannot meet the demands of architectural design. How designers break through traditions, seek, and create new techniques that help turn architects' imaginations into reality. It also provides an important basis for future cooperation and innovation in architectural and structural design.

Centre Pompidou: The Reproduction of Parisian History and Culture in a Postmodernist Building

This essay has explored how Centre Pompidou, as a postmodernist building, recreates the history and culture of Paris in its design and function. Centre Pompidou is more than just a museum, art gallery and community centre, it is also a symbol of a city’s history and culture. By analysing the building’s exterior design, interior spaces and functions, this essay examines how Centre Pompidou blends Parisian tradition with innovation and how it reflects the city’s multicultural and historical heritage through its unique design and functions. In addition, the essay discusses how Centre Pompidou serves as a bridge between past and present, tradition and innovation, providing visitors with a platform for a comprehensive understanding of Parisian history and culture.

Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici at Vézelay

Abstract The study of collaborative work by architects and designers can present difficulties. The principal biographers of Eileen Gray asserted that she played the key role in the design of the houses that her friend Jean Badovici (1893–1956) acquired and transformed in Vézelay between 1926 and 1934 and that this work contributed to the design of her other buildings. This claim is worth investigating because the Vézelay houses present innovative and distinctive features, and because Jean Badovici’s qualities as architect have been insufficiently studied. A method is presented here for distinguishing between different hands based on the forensic analysis of individual words and letters. This approach could be of use in many contexts but particularly in the case of close collaboration between architects and designers. Applied initially to drawings for Badovici’s houses at Vézelay, the method can be applied to the many other drawings in the archives of the V&A, the Pompidou Centre, the Eileen Gray archive in the National Museum of Ireland, and the Badovici archive in the Getty Research Institute. The evidence from this analysis is set alongside other arguments for evaluating Gray’s involvement in the design of the Badovici houses at Vézelay. The aim of this essay is not to challenge Gray’s collaboration in the design process but to test claims of her sole or principal role in the design of these houses.

Interaction between a Museum and a City in Europe

The article examines different viewpoints on the museum’s role in the transformation of urban identity. The review of existing research aimed at mapping and exploring the museum-city interaction and its features throughout history. The selected studies were categorized and analysed according to the field they cover (urbanism and architecture, economy, sociology and museology). The analysis has shown that the interaction between the museum and the city can be traced throughout history and that it experienced its first rise in the mid- 1970s with the construction of the Pompidou Centre, and then in the late 20th and early 21st century, influenced by modern phenomena of globalization and migration. Due to the new way of interaction, museums have changed their architecture and purposes, repositioning themselves as a new tool for urban transformation. A tentative conceptual framework and methodology were set up based on research literature to evaluate the interaction between the museum and the city. Further research is necessary to explore and define those interactions and tools that will encourage the role of European museums in promoting and transforming urban areas.

”Memes uden mål”

Beginning from a major retrospective exhibition at the prestigious Centre Pompidou in Paris in the summer of 2021, this article discusses the German artist-theorist Hito Steyerl’s political aesthetics and, more specifically, the idea of the art strike as a strategy of resistance. Through a historically contextualizing analysis of two key artworks, Strike I (2010) and Strike II (2012), the article argues that the proper theoretical framework for understanding Steyerl’s work is not post-Occupy “strike art” but rather the cultural logic of the “era of riots.” Thus, the article claims that Steyerl’s art strike resonates in form and content with extra-institutional and “memetic” forms of contemporary protest culture.

A Museum of Black Civilizations in the Contemporary World: In conversation with Hamady Bocoum

A Museum of Black Civilizations in the Contemporary World: In conversation with Hamady Bocoum

Megastructure as a New Urban Paradigm

In this research I would like to compare Berlin's Hauptbahnhof to other megastructures in order to understand their relationship to modern urbanism. Megastructuralism can be explained in three different steps showing its self-evolution from the utopian housing concepts of the 1930´s to the megastations of the 21st century. First step: megastructure as a residential project. The beginning of the Megastructure era was related to the residential housing project located along a highway from the modernist movement’s “Fort l'Empereur project” (Le Corbusier, 1931) or Archigram's proposal link to the new urban forms in a technological period known as "Lower Manhattan Expressway” (Paul Rudolph, 1970). Second step: megastructure as institutional project. The use of large structures found its place in cultural spaces such as “Centre Pompidou” (Piano, Rogers and Franchini, 1970) and in workplaces of the post-industrial city described by Koolhaas in “Delirious New York". Third step: megastructure as mobility, ecology and technology project. The modern society of the 21st century has a never before seen demand for mobility. Today’s cities become more and more machines of transportation. The combination of computer technology and the challenges of the 21th century, produce a new kind of megastructuralism. Berlin’s public transportation system is one of the Europa’s biggest train stations: “Hauptbahnhof”. In this research it will show that Hauptbahnhof station must be seen as a new kind of megastructure. In the future, cities will become more and more crowded; hence space will have to be used more efficiently. Hauptbahnhof shows how space can be used most efficiently if buildings grow into megastructures that accommodate every possible function. The station is therefore a vast source for models of densification that could lead to a sustainable urbanism in the future.

From the mass media museum to the social media museum: Investigating the museum space in the era of mobile devices

Eliseo Verón has defined the museum as a mass medium whose discourse is materialized through the body of the visitors: their spatial appropriations manifest not only the gap between the spatial proposal and its reception but also the bonds they establish with the institutions. Applying to the museum the notion proposed by Verón to refer to the bond between media and audience, these bonds crystallize different types of visiting contracts. Nowadays, the idea of a contract is central in visitors’ consolidation of the museum experience: it is no longer a matter of merely visiting exhibitions but of sharing content on Instagram, sitting down at the café to study, or frequenting the esplanade to walk the dog. Thus, the bonds branch out into direct contracts (commercial or educational) and distinctive agreements (e.g., allowing the transformation of the esplanade into a park). This bifurcation enables us to rethink the notion of museum visits and analyze contemporary visiting practices. Following Verón’s methodology and based on a seven-year-long study of museum visits, we present some conclusions regarding the practices developed on the esplanades and in the entrance halls of Centre Pompidou and Museo Reina Sofia. In these places, visitors and museums maintain their bonds. We also reflect on contemporary technical possibilities, such as the 360° audiovisual recording used in interactional linguistics and the necessity of studying the links between virtual and physical museum experiences.

The cinefication of museums: from exhibitions to films. The case of Tate Modern

Since the end of the 20th century, museum institutions have been adopting the logic of communication, promotion, and administration typical of cultural industries, mainly Cinema. In 1994, Andreas Huyssen argued that the museum, as an elitist place of preservation of canon and high culture, gave way to the museum as a mass medium. Cinema became the paradigm of contemporary cultural activities whose new exhibition practices respond to the changing expectations of the public and their constant search for stellar events.Since the end of the 20th century, museum institutions have been adopting the logic of communication, promotion, and administration typical of cultural industries, mainly Cinema. In 1994, Andreas Huyssen argued that the museum, as an elitist place of preservation of canon and high culture, gave way to the museum as a mass medium. Cinema became the paradigm of contemporary cultural activities whose new exhibition practices respond to the changing expectations of the public and their constant search for stellar events. This process is evident in the increasing use of banners, marquees, and all manner of resources aimed at promoting the temporary exhibitions gaining their place as the main attractions of art museums. Moreover, with the advent of social media, the phenomenon of cinefication of the museum has accelerated. Exhibitions are now titled, conceived, promoted, and distributed as films, while artists, adorned by the figure of the genius, are presented as parts of the art history star system. In order to highlight this phenomenon, we present an analysis of the programming and promotion of temporary exhibitions at Tate Modern, the paradigm of 21st-century museums. This institution not only titles its exhibitions in a cinematographic manner but also produces trailers and posts them on its website and social media. Our work focuses on one exhibition in particular: Picasso 1932, Love, Fame, Tragedy. To this end we observed both the curatorial discourse and the communication strategies applied by Tate. This paper is part of a research project that includes MoMA, Malba, Centre Pompidou, and Reina Sofia. The study of this phenomenon will provide an overview of the epochal style of modern art museums in the conception and communication of modern and contemporary art exhibitions.
 This process is evident in the increasing use of banners, marquees, and all manner of resources aimed at promoting the temporary exhibitions gaining their place as the main attractions of art museums. Moreover, with the advent of social media, the phenomenon of cinefication of the museum has accelerated. Exhibitions are now titled, conceived, promoted, and distributed as films, while artists, adorned by the figure of the genius, are presented as parts of the art history star system.
 In order to highlight this phenomenon, we present an analysis of the programming and promotion of temporary exhibitions at Tate Modern, the paradigm of 21st-century museums. This institution not only titles its exhibitions in a cinematographic manner but also produces trailers and posts them on its website and social media. Our work focuses on one exhibition in particular: Picasso 1932, Love, Fame, Tragedy. To this end we observed both the curatorial discourse and the communication strategies applied by Tate.
 This paper is part of a research project that includes MoMA, Malba, Centre Pompidou, and Reina Sofia. The study of this phenomenon will provide an overview of the epochal style of modern art museums in the conception and communication of modern and contemporary art exhibitions.

“Framing” Kandinsky’s Painting with Red Spot (1914)

In contemporary museum studies discourse, scholars have begun to reexamine both the role of the curator and exhibition space in their joint effect on visitor experience. Underpinning the relationship of these three parties is the element of language, or more commonly known within this discipline, the wall label. This label intrinsically “frames” its adjacent artwork as it proposes a certain narrative, one that is crafted by curators and communicates ideas and themes deemed important by its writers. However, what about art that eludes one singular interpretation, such as abstraction? Could proposing an exclusive narrative be detrimental to the multiplicity of meaning that abstract art promotes? 
 Considering these issues, this paper examines Painting with Red Spot (1914) by Wassily Kandinsky and its current “framing” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris to analyze both the relationship between language, abstraction and meaning making, and the complicated role of artist intent that accompanies exhibiting Kandinsky. This paper argues that “framing” Kandinsky’s P.W.R.S in relation to the artist’s contradictory embrace of kitsch in 1914 will provide a framework for his stylistic experiments at this time in his career, offering the proper stepping-stones to encourage contemplation while still leaving room for a multiplicity of meaning.

The French Telematic Magazine Art Accès (1984–1987)

Created in 1984 by the French artists ORLAN, Frédéric Develay and Frédéric Martin and shown for the first time at the Centre Pompidou during the exhibition Les Immatériaux (28 March to 15 July 1985), the telematic magazine Art Accès has marked the history of the art on Minitel, the French Videotex system in use between 1980 and 2012. For ORLAN and Frédéric Develay, Art Accès was a way both to propose an artistic and cultural alternative to a purely utilitarian and mercantile content, but also to explore the possibilities of a ‘poor’ medium. Working within the framework of the magazine, ORLAN and Frédéric Develay invited visual artists, but also poets and musicians to use videotex, to transgress it in all possible ways and thus to make an original work that is made by this medium and for this medium. Although the French Minitel network ended in 2012 and the magazine has long since disappeared, there are still traces, fragments or documents that allow us to reconstruct its history. This essay proposes an initial study of this telematic experience and of some of its most emblematic creations.

Global Art Collectives and Exhibition Making

Art collectives come into existence for many reasons, whether to collaborate on art making or to generate a space for contemporary art outside of the established channels of exhibition and the art market. These efforts have been captured in recent exhibitions such as The Ungovernables, organized by the New Museum in 2012; Six Lines of Flight, which was launched at SFMOMA in 2013; and Cosmopolis I, organized by the Centre Pompidou in 2017. Artist collectives have received some scholarly attention, primarily as producers of artworks, but their exhibition-making practices have not been explored. Some of the collectives included in these exhibitions have also been very involved in exhibition making themselves. The Indonesian art collective ruangrupa was selected to curate the 2022 edition of documenta. This selection emerges not only from their participation in international biennials and their own exhibition practice in Jakarta—including the organization of regular exhibitions, workshops and film screenings at their compound—but also more ambitions events such as Jakarta 32 °C, a festival of contemporary art and media (2004–2014), or O.K. Video (2006–2018). Another group, the Raqs Media Collective, based in Delhi, curated the Shanghai Bienniale in 2016 and the Yokohama Trienniale in 2020. This paper will connect the local and the global through an examination of art collectives’ community-based work in their own cities, and the way it translates into global art events.

Rethinking Art Museum Spaces and Investigating How Auxiliary Paths Work Differently

It has been recognized that one of the key issues in designing museums is the interaction between the layout of space and the layout of objects, and spatial configurations are strongly related to didactic narratives, social implications, and curatorial intentions. However, it has not yet been examined thoroughly how museums work from a spatial perspective. Apart from the layout of objects, spatial configurations play an important role in creating various walking sequences, ranging from main routes to auxiliary paths. Art museums in particular can be characterized by such deviations generated by the auxiliary path, but they are hardly understood from this aspect. Therefore, this study aims to explore the auxiliary paths and examine how they work through in-depth theoretical analysis based on space syntax. By analyzing four art museums in terms of isovist attributes, syntactic measures, spatial sequences, and possible trails, it has been concluded that in the cases of the Uffizi Gallery and the Moderna Museet, spatial sequences work conservatively, so that auxiliary paths are channeled back to the gathering space. This is because the walking experience is strongly correlated with visual syntactic features such as connectivity, integration, and intelligibility. Conversely, walking sequences in the case of the Centre Pompidou and the Alte Pinakothek work generatively, and auxiliary paths are rarely related to the gathering space because the walking experience is strongly concerned with visual geometric properties such as isovist area/perimeter and occlusivity.

Artistic Labyrinths and the Tower of Babel. A Comparative Look at the Exhibitions: Documenta 5, Les Immatériaux and Labyrinth – an Underground Space

In this article, I would like to compare three exhibitions: documenta 5 in Kassel (1972), Les Immatériaux at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1985) and Labyrinth – An Underground Space at the Church of the Ascension of Christ in Warsaw (1989). These exhibitions are different in terms of their scale, fame, works presented and venue, and marked by different local contexts. The visions of art that the organisers – Harald Szeemann, Jean-François Lyotard and Janusz Bogucki – wanted to articulate through them seem to me an ideal example of reflecting on the integrity or heterogeneity of contemporary artistic activity. It is clear that the exhibitions discussed here were based on a pattern of wandering with the inherent figure of the tower-labyrinth of Babel. Therefore, the topos of the Tower of Babel, revolving around the theme of unity and dispersion, is quite fundamental to these reflections. Bogucki and Lyotard were to some extent similar in their diagnosis of contemporary art, which they saw in terms of dispersion and a great diversity of styles, motivations and references to reality – just like Szeemann, in fact. While Bogucki was searching for some universal ground of understanding in a situation of "confusion of tongues" in the sphere of spirituality, Szeemann delved into and explored separate artistic worlds operating in the registers of triviality and spirituality. In comparison, Lyotard, like other postmodernists, described dispersion as a condition inherent in the present.

Beatrice Alemagna: “A Painter and a Writer of Stories”

Beatrice Alemagna: “A Painter and a Writer of Stories” Anna Becchi (bio) Beatrice Alemagna was born in Bologna in 1973. Her cultured family put her in touch with many stories since she was a little child and encouraged her and her sister Veronica in their creativity. So, by the time she was eight she had already decided that, whatever the cost, once grown up she would become “a painter and a writer of stories,” which is how she likes to describe herself. Essentially a self-made artist, she perfected her graphic style at the ISIA in Urbino. When she started her career, however, the market in Italy wasn’t ready for her experimental and sophisticated illustrations; it was only later that little independent publishing houses like Topipittori, based in Milan, opened up to Alemagna’s work, and this is where most of her Italian books are still published. Click for larger view View full resolution Winning the first-prize Figures Futures at the Salon du Livre et de la Presse Jeunesse in Montreuil in 1996, she got her self- confidence boosted and realized that in France her art would be better understood. This was the reason that, one year later, Alemagna decided to move to Paris. She wanted to stay for a few months, but this land—like she said in an interview—welcomed her “with open arms” and in the end she grew roots there. She still lives in the French capital with her husband and two daughters. After working for advertisement companies, illustrating adult book covers, and designing posters for the Centre Pompidou, she specialized mainly in creating artistic picturebooks using techniques that are suited at the same time for children and adults. She has written and illustrated dozens of books for Albin Michel, Topipittori, Harper Collins, Tate Publisher, Thames & Hudson, Enchanted Lion, Frances Lincoln, Mondadori, Hélium, MoMA, Seuil, Autrement, Gallimard, Les grandes personnes, Donzelli, Didier jeunesse, Phaïdon, Mirando Bok, Rabén & Sjögren, Einaudi Edizioni, and Walker Books. Her books have received numerous awards and have been translated into multiple languages. Several of them have been selected for the White Ravens list by the International Youth Library in Munich. She has been repeatedly nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Her artwork has been the subject of many solo exhibitions and has also been featured in group exhibitions at major museums. Alemagna always works by hand using diverse colors and media (pencils, crayons, oil color, watercolor, gouache, ink), but she often returns to the potency of mixed-media collage and experiments with other unusual stylistic means like embroidery (My Friend, 2002) or felting (Bugs in a Blanket, 2009, [End Page 67] and all her following books about bugs). She plays with perspective and composes her images in wonderful ways. She loves to mix techniques and to create hybrid forms. In her illustrations, she doesn’t like to be restricted by anything; she defies boundaries of age, time, aesthetic canons, and established conventions. She is not limited by the size of the page and so her books are often oversized, but they still talk about little things that she discovers in nature or in people’s facial expressions and emotions. Beatrice Alemagna regards herself mainly as a storytelller. For her, words are an instrument, just like a pencil or a brush. And if she doesn’t find the exact words she is looking for, she doesn’t even conceive the picture she wants to draw, so everything actually starts from the text. She explains, “To draw is to tell. Everyone who feels emotion has something to tell. Emotions keep on changing, growing, as children do. My drawings and stories change with them.” While drawing comes naturally to her, creating a book with a narrative rhythm can be difficult or even painful. When the finished book is in her hands, however, her joy and satisfaction are great. Perhaps one of her most accomplished books is Un lion à Paris (A Lion in Paris; 2006). It tells the story of a lion who, bored by his rural life in the savanna, seeks excitement and opportunity in the City of Light. Upon arriving...

Ivan Leonidov's Institute of Statistics (1929–1930)

The article is about the unpublished project of I. I. Leonidov, whose facades are found in the collection of the Pompidou Center. The project of the years of Leonidov's creative apogee significantly complements our understanding of the evolution of the architect's creativity. In addition to describing and evaluating the reliability of available materials, the project is placed in the context of both Leonidov's work and Soviet architecture of the 1930s in general.

“Moskva‐Berlin, Berlin‐Moskau, 1900–1950”: Memory and Forgetting

This article reconstructs and reexamines the dramatic events leading up to the “Moscow‐Berlin, 1900–1950” exhibition, jointly staged by the Berlinische Galerei and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in 1995–96. Modeled upon the landmark “Moscow‐Paris” exhibit that had taken place at the Pompidou Center in 1979 and the Pushkin Museum in 1981, “Moscow‐Berlin” has been largely forgotten by time, despite the fact that it, too, was intially viewed as a blockbusters event. Beyond changing professional and cultural conventions, a series of underlying factors help to explain the contrasting reactions to the two exhibits: international politics and the art market, passing trends, and media discourses. By the time “Moscow‐Berlin” opened, interest in the Russian avant‐garde had faded, while interest in 1930s art and culture was on the rise, fueled not by commercial but by an ideological demand to reconceptualize the canon for writing history and art history. Additionally, “Moscow‐Berlin” was conceived of as a political event, not only vis à vis the art on display, but its very location: West Berlin. But during the early stages of planning and preparation, however, both the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic disappeared from the map: this solved some thorny political issues surrounding the exhibit, but it created myriad other problems. At first, German politicians hoped the exhibit would facilitate the return of trophy art taken from Germany at the end of the Second World War. When reality dispelled this illusion, the German press launched an extended campaign against the exhibitions, which would later impact how it was remembered. Meantime, of course, when the exhibit arrived in Moscow it opened in a city in the throes of socioeconomic unrest and a contentious presidential election. The display of Stalinist art in all its radiant glory sparked in some viewers nostalgia for the Soviet past, and partially suppressed the question of whether shame should accompany the art of Stalinism. Collective memory hoped instead to glide over the more painful chapters of the recent past.

Review: Eileen Gray, Designer and Architect

Review: <i>Eileen Gray, Designer and Architect</i>