“Made in Neuchâtel. Deux siècles d’indiennes” 7 October 2018 – 19 May 2019. Musée d’art et d’histoire de Neuchâtel
By « Made in Neuchâtel. Deux siècles d’indiennes », the Art and History Museum of Neuchâtel offers the first large exhibition on “indiennes” (printed cotton cloths) made in Neuchâtel between the 18th and 19th century. From a rich series of more than 300 artefacts – “indiennes”, projects on paper, sample books, portraits and historical sources- the exhibition makes us discover one of the main printed canvas producer area from all over Europe. This immersive and interactive installation closes the exhibition. It let the visitor choose between three patterns, which have been designed from ancient “indiennes”. The visitor can change the colour and the scale of the pattern and project it on walls by a control interface. The public take part to the creation and commercialisation process who has been and still is set up by the textile industry, by creating a unique fictitious tapestry.
In a conversation filled with loops, black holes, grains of space, this interview with physicist and historian Carlo Rovelli also poses the fascinating question, “What if time didn’t exist?”
Our understanding of the universe rests on two pillars: the theory of general relativity and quantum physics. Two theoretical constructions whose accuracy is nowadays precisely verified, but which do not speak to each other, which ignore each other, so to speak. Some researchers, such as the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, are working to fill this gap. Among other research directors at the CNRS and a professor at the Université de la Méditerranée in Marseille, Carlo Rovelli has developed, with the American Lee Smolin, the theory of quantum gravitation with loops aimed, as it were, at unifying general relativity and quantum physics.
Even if all this remains largely mysterious and incomprehensible to most of us, the sky lights up a little as we listen to Carlo Rovelli at the microphone of Stéphane Deligeorges in “Continent sciences”. In the course of a conversation filled with loops, black holes, grains of space, strings and networks of spins, a fascinating question arose which is also the title of a book by Carlo Rovelli: “What if time didn’t exist?”
François Pinault entrusted the choice and design of the interior furnishings of the Bourse de Commerce of Paris and the creation of the furniture surrounding it to the Breton designers Ronan and Erwan (born in Quimper, respectively in 1971 and 1976) Bouroullec. A look back at two paths that meet, differ and complement each other around a very first museum project in Paris.
The Centre Georges-Pompidou is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. How does the utopia of its origins still inhabit this incredible cultural machine today? A look back at four decades of success.
It is home to one of the world’s largest museums of modern art, at the head of a major collection of works from 1900 to the present day, the Institute for Research and Acoustic/Music Coordination (Ircam), founded by Pierre Boulez, a gigantic public library (the BPI), temporary exhibition galleries, theatres and cinemas. Familiarly known as “Beaubourg”, the liner gained a foothold in the Les Halles district under the impetus of President Pompidou, who dreamed of a place in Paris “that would be both a museum and a centre of creation, where the plastic arts would rub shoulders with music, cinema, books and audiovisual research”. Before its inauguration in 1977, the aesthetics of the architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers sparked an epic controversy. But once the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou was launched, its success continued unabated. A laboratory for sensory experiences (sound, visual, audiovisual), mixing artistic practices (painting, sculpture with the Brancusi collection, graphics, design, poetry, dance…) and multiple audiences, this flagship of French cultural institutions offers the opportunity to discover an avant-garde in perpetual turmoil.
Unique model? Giving the floor to artists (Annette Messager, Giuseppe Penone, Daniel Buren…) as well as to those who made or are making the institution (Claude Mollard, its first secretary general, Serge Lasvignes, its current president, Frank Madlener, the director of Ircam…), this film revisits four decades of inventiveness. At a time when the art market is booming, international museums are competing fiercely and public funding is dwindling, it invites us to reflect on a unique model which, like the Louvre, is now bringing its “brand” to life outside Paris, with the Centre Pompidou-Metz, and abroad, in Málaga, Shanghai and Brussels.
