Electric nights

Within the framework of Russia-France Year 2010

Curators:Laurent Lebon, Philippe-Alain Michaud

Nuits Electriques

The Nuits Electriques exhibition takes its name from the eponymous 1928 film directed by Eugene Deslaw. In Deslaw's film the lamps, neon signs and shop windows of three cities at night -151; Paris, Berlin and Prague -151; are portrayed like a pyrotechnical display. Cinema, like fireworks, is created by projecting intermittent and ephemeral light into darkness. Using works selected from the Pompidou Centre collection, the exhibition aims to show the continuity that links firework displays and the art of moving images by the visual mainsprings of pyrotechnics: flowers, stars, rain, fire, storms, fountains, volcanoes-133; Presented in open plan as a stroll and an entertainment just as much as an exhibition in the classic sense, Nuits electriques operates from the same precepts as a firework display, with alternating installations and projections. Moving images are presented on screens of different sizes, suspended in space at various heights. In this way the principle of horizontal vision is modified: spectators view the exhibition as they would watch fireworks, gazing up at the skies above.