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Performance from far away in Montmartre

Photo: From the video “Déjà Vu” by Filippo Berta After this weeks many contemporary art fairs you may think the Parisian art scene is up for a little, well deserved break. But there's still new art to be explored, and fun openings to go to. One of them is the exhibition PIXELPOPS! featuring performance videos by a large number of international artists.  PIXELPOPS! is an ongoing, traveling series of annual digital art exhibits, founded in 2005 by the artist and web developer Colleen Tully. The series changes with each year's new locale and the creativity each new curator brings. Year after year, the online catalogue continues to grow and provide new resonances and global connections in artistic interpretation. This years curator of PIXELPOPS! is Paris based Philip Tonda from Transient Projects To People. The theme of the exhibit is "Performance from far away": More specifically performance art made distinctly for the video camera. The videos are shown in the miniature-sized, but large-minded gallery space Nouvel Organon, located on an eclectic street in the lower part of Montmartre, creating an intimate setting for an intriguing art experience.  The opening event takes place Friday October 28, 2011 from 7pm. Between 10pm and midnight there'll be music provided by Graham Peel from the Paris/Berlin based WITTY BANTER. The event will be live broadcasted on TPTP's website. Details: TPTP in cooperation with Nouvel Organon : 20 Rue Muller, 75018 Paris. (Metro Chateau Rouge (line 4) and Anvers (line 2). Further information can be found on the website of TPTP.

 

2011 Nuit Blanche: Montmartre / Anvers (18e)

 
Image: Frances Dubois
Text: Susie Kahlich

Some very cool stuff is happening around Montmartre / Anvers, where everything is within a stone’s throw of a bar or café open all night to keep your whistle wet and your nuit, well, blanche:

For reasons I have yet to discover, Montmartre is home to frequent parades and Nuit Blanche is no different.  Nuit Blanche 2011 kicks off with Italian artist Marcello Maloberti and his troupe forming a human caravan, parading 70 porcelain tigers through the winding streets up to the Arènes de Montmartre off rue Chappe, where the tigers will be on display throughout the night. The official literature says this performance is somehow supposed to combine art and social utopia, which makes sense if your utopia includes socializing with porcelain jungle cats.

Not to be a big creep about it, but as someone without children it’s a treat to get a peek inside Paris’ elementary schools without worrying about being arrested.  At the École Élementaire Foyatier, Icelander Ragnar Kjartansson’s video installation “The End – Rocky Mountains” will be projected on five screens positioned around the gymnasium, while in the school courtyard artist Virgina Yassef’s mythological paleontology findings are on display.

At the Gymnase Ronsard, get a preview of art collective BGL’s installation “Entertainment + problems”, on exposition in October at the MAC / VAL.  Using recycled materials and found objects to evoke a huge bonfire, the piece is meant to “tickle the urban tribal instinct.”  Kind of like Burning Man, without the sand, hippies and actual flames.

Befitting an area rife with sex clubs, transvestites and hookers, Jesper Just's experimental film No Man Is An Island plays at Le Divan du Monde.  A meditation on masculinity, gender roles and societal masks set in a dying strip club, the film is centered around interpretations of Roy Orbison’s classic broken-heart song, “Crying.”

Montmartre's famous funicular will be transformed to a moving heartbeat in France Dubois’ installation “Extra-systole”.  Bathing the cab in pulsing red light that refer to a beating heart, watch the pulse slow down on the cab’s descent and speed up on the cab’s rise, just like your own heartbeat will be doing if you decide to walk the 200+ steps to the top.

At the top of the hill at Place Louise Michel, just in front of the very Catholic Sacre Coeur, artist Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil recreates his tribute to the 400^th anniversary of Galileo’s presentation of his telescope on Mount Gianicolo.  Using 500 candles, the installation maps out what the sky will look like 100 years in the future on 1 October 2111. And while you’re at the top, visit the Église St. Pierre and watch Adrian Paci’s 35mm film “Per Speculum” a beautiful and pastoral work depicting children playing with mirrors, slings and the reflection of sunlight.

More installations and performances are scattered around the Butte, but one of the most interesting is Belgian artist Filip Gilissen’s installation at the Église St. Jean de Montmartre just across from Place des Abbesses.  Titled “The Winner Takes It All”, the work will only be activated once during the night, when the 5000^th visitor triggers a golden explosion inside the beautiful Art Nouveau church.  Easily revisited in between verres du vin, check in repeatedly to try and catch the 5000^th visitor, or park yourself at one of the cafés across the Place and start counting. If you haven't had too much to drink, race across the Place and into the church as soon as you get to 4999.  Bonne Nuit!

 

Super-Computer-Romantics: Matt Pyke At The Gaîté

Text: Aidan Mac Guill
Image: Nowness

Seriously, I promise I'll stop writing about the Gaîté Lyrique when it stops having awesome stuff to go see.

'Matt Pyke & Friends: Super-Computer-Romantics' is the first major exhibition to be held at the new venue, and showcases the work of digital artist and freakin' genius Matt Pyke, who makes visuals with computers that will make your eyes melt.

Lenin, Stalin And Music

Text: Tristan Stansbury-Worthington
Image: Viktor Koretski 'In capitalist and socialist countries', 1948, National Library of Russia, St Petersburg.

The Année France-Russie is drawing to a close, its end accompanied by a suitably Siberian winter. Part of the programme? Perhaps. After all, it is rumoured that Stalin authorised the use of cloud seeding to avoid it raining on his parades, and as the current exhibition at the Cité de la Musique shows, precious little escaped his control.

'Lénine, Staline et la Musique' traces in depth the turbulent musical history of the first thirty-five years of the Soviet Union. I have always been astounded by the wealth of creativity that blossomed in the stifling atmosphere of censorship and control that reigned during the Soviet period, most notably under the Man of Iron. But then, the hotter the greenhouse - the finer the blossoms. There is much to discover: from Soviet music's avant-garde overture in those first years of promise following the revolution, to the establishment of Soviet Realism and the subsequent suppression of the faintest hint of discord. It is not the happiest of stories, but it is one well told.

Nuit Blanche 2010 - Belleville

Text: Aidan Mac Guill
Image: Robert Stadler/Marc Domage

October 2nd 1925: John Logie Baird performs the first test of a working television system; October 2nd 1958: Guinea declares independence from France; October 2nd 1984: my brother is born; October 2nd 2010: the annual Nuit Blanche takes place in Paris. Nuit Blanche, everyone's favourite all-night free culture bender in the city. Slightly cooler than Nuit des Musees, a little bit more serious (and safer) than Fete de la Musique.This year the action is focused around the islands of St Louis and Cite, to the west around Alma-Trocadero and in the east around Belleville. The majority of events will start around 7pm and remain open all night. Here's a couple of things worth checking out around Belleville.

Not to be missed is Hakima el Djoudi's 'Naked City', a simultaneous projection of several videos on the walls of the rue de la Fontaine au Roi. For each of the videos the artist has delved into the archives of American films, seeking out cinematographic images of neon signs with old-fashioned logos, graphics and  slogans, transforming the street into a woozy, black-and-white Hollywood dreamworld.

HEEZA Flipbook Store

Text and image: Scott Blake

HEEZA is a small store in Paris dedicated to flipbooks. Don't be fooled by tight space, this is the biggest collection of artist books and optical toys I have ever seen. Pierre-François Maquaire runs the mail order firm and has very impressive catalog of folioscopes (French for flipbooks).

His amazing collection includes videos, graphic novels, and super cool zoetropes. You can order online in French and English, but it is a real treat to flip through hundreds of examples in the store. To avoid disappointment I suggest calling ahead 06 98 06 90 92 or email Pierre heeza[at]heeza.fr.

HEEZA

9, Avenue de la République

75011 Paris.

Block Rockin’ Pain o ChoKolat

Will Hutchins writing for I V Y paris

Unless you were so incredibly hung-over on Sunday that you couldn’t leave your apartment all day then you surely would have noticed that it was Fête de la Musique. Dj’s were spinning from the rooftops, buskers were on every street corner and bands and barbecues were joined together in musical matrimony outside bars. Free live music all over the city equals good day, plus great weather equals an even better day!

I decided to celebrate this joyous occasion at perennial Parisian party throwers Pain o ChoKolat’s block party at place Gustav Toudouze, IXeme, in conjunction with the Pigalle clothes boutique. 

The Art Pack - Pain O choKolat /Block Party!/

The dj and artist collective who proclaim themselves to be “a revoulution that brings music, fashion, modern art and street culture naturally together”, had a set up a stage and small beer tent in the little square. As well as PoC djs playing some party-starting (but to be honest, not very well mixed) hip hop whilst a little kid pretended to play the keyboard and a man who dressed like it was literally his job to pull 80’s dance moves robot-ed all over the place, the hipster crowd were getting down and dirty to some live bands.

Cosmo Vitelli's I'm a Cliché Compilation

Will Hutchins writing for I V Y paris

The new Cosmo Vitelli compilation comes out this week on june 6th. Entitled 'Moments Of A Crisis' and released on his Parisian based label I'm a Cliché it features tracks by Yuksek, Simian Mobile Disco, Runaway and many other goodies to get your summer party shaking. True, people may not enjoy it quite as much as the guy in this video seems to, but it still sounds like a cracking compilation.

HF | RG at Jeu de Paume

The exhibition "H F | R G" at Jeu de Paume, Place de Concorde, brings together the visions of two important contemporary artists, Harun Farocki and Rodney Graham, whose work has a great deal in common through their interest in film and video, its history and the idea of self-representation.

Both present film-based installations reflect four themes that structure their respective bodies of work: the archive, the nonverbal, the machine (and devices), and montage. Both artists have produced new work for this exhibition ongoing now through June 7th, 2009.

Kitsuné & Cobrasnake

Kitsuné meets with photoblog the Cobrasnake, for their video featuring Classixx - "I'll get you". We like the catchy melodic synth beats - perfect for this time in Paris, when the sun has finally decided to come out! Album out June 1st, 2009. Keep an eye out for it in the Kitsuné e-shop here.