The Culture of Beauty
ATELIER DES LUMIÈRES
Everything flows
A spectacular XXL installation in Paris shows how differently you can experience and present art. Mademoiselle Lili immersed herself in Hundertwasser, Klimt and company, and felt like she’d been given a new lease of life.
Even after many years, the city of Paris still bears secrets that I need to discover. For example, I often walked past a seemingly nondescript building in my neighbourhood without paying it any attention. But, for a few weeks it’s been different: suddenly, long lines are constantly waiting outside the freshly renovated façade – Atelier des Lumières has moved into the former 19th century foundry. The city’s first museum of digital art. Digital art? It makes me spontaneously think of harshly flickering computer monitors, creaking electro sounds, and somehow I instantly feel tired. Oh no. But one weekday I came home from the supermarket with a shopping bag, and there was only a short line. Curious – perhaps the crowds are right – I ventured inside.
What fun! The impressive volume of the old factory wasn’t the only surprise – 10-metre high ceilings and an area of more than 2000 square-metres. I was amazed that such industrial monuments still exist in the city! To the music of Richard Wagner, as if by magic, suddenly the arcades of Vienna’s Fine Arts Museum appear not only on the walls, but also on the floor and under the ceiling the paintings of Hans Makart and Gustav Klimt begin to dance, get closer together, details are deconstructed and merge together. Everything flows, moves and turns, even the projections on the floor act like a moving walkway to take me on a pretty crazy trip through art and music history – from Neoclassicism to Art Nouveau to Egon Schiele, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and ultimately to the digital here and now with the club-like installation “Poetic_AI”. Together with the music that fills the room, it sucks one into a fourth dimension. AMIEX – Art & Music Immersive Experience – is the name of this new way to feel and experience art and music. With goose bumps and a slightly dizzy feeling, I wander through a perfectly orchestrated art ensemble that is constantly in motion, and I feel out of this world.
In a completely mirrored separate room, it gets even more intense. I lie with the others on the floor and practically float through dancing pictures with endless reflections and with neither top nor bottom – as if I had been swallowed by a huge kaleidoscope. In the equally interesting studio bar you fly over the roofs of Paris, as well as through the pulsating numeric image worlds of OUCHHH, an international digital artist collective. Absolutely captivating!
Even after I look at Paris’s blue summer sky again, the world suddenly feels completely different. Enchanted, magical and very carefree. This refreshing immersion in feelings is something I’m sure I will treat myself to more often. But the next time without a shopping bag.
