Boussoles à la page Œuvres en création dans l’atelier, une ancienne usine réhabilitée. Membres du Studio Saraceno, qui associe artistes et scientifiques. Works in progress in the studio, a refurbished former factory. Members of the Studio Saraceno team, which brings together artists and scientists. Lofty poetics Inspired by the aerial in Paris in 2015, during the COP21, As he described the main lines of his world of arachnids, Argentine artist winning acclaim for Saraceno and his synesthetic exhibition, strange har- Tomás Saraceno weaves featherlight art- ethereal, transportive art, in which art, monics were drifting out of a neigh- works that draw on science and architec- science and utopian ideas overlap. boring building used as a storehouse ture. He spoke with us at his Berlin Another of these spheres, based on the and test lab. In a room as large as studio while preparing the major show concepts of recycling and saving energy, three ships, a concerto for strings was currently running at the Palais de Tokyo is on display at the Palais de Tokyo, being performed, yet there weren’t any in Paris. where Saraceno has been given carte violins or bows. Here, it wasn’t spiders blanche by curator Rebecca Lamarche- but a team of dedicated assistants who “I’ve always dreamed of floating among Vadel to fill every space. were spending entire days producing the clouds—hence the idea of creating In opposition to the Anthropocene a different kind of web, knotting a floating museum,” says Tomás epoch, which is seeing humankind dam- together thousands of threads. You Saraceno. He’s been launching floating aging the earth’s ecosystem, Saraceno entered this dense network as if you sculptures into the skies for over ten proposes the Aerocene, a new era of were entering an echo chamber, years now. In the Berlin studio where weightlessness, lightness, economy of because if you brushed against or he’s worked for seven years—a former means and freedom of circulation—that plucked the sonorous threads, you set Agfa factory—an entire floor has been of spheres, ideas, sounds, humans and off a tsunami of vibratory sounds. given over to this stratospheric project. even animals. “At the Palais de Tokyo, the installa- From their workrooms with their On the second floor of the main building tion is even larger and we’re organiz- vast windows overlooking the Spree, he occupies, the artist was cohabiting ing ‘cosmic jams,’” said Saraceno. assistants from all over the world peacefully with hundreds of spiders “People will have to coordinate their monitor the flight of these migratory weaving webs around metallic struc- playing, because one sound causes “balloons” in real time, some on a large tures, forming the complex, lacy designs others to reverberate.” In an adjacent map, others online. that are now on display at the Palais de space in total darkness, shimmering “We’ve been launching operations the Tokyo under cloches and spotlights. spheres diffused their great glimmer- world over to collect plastic bags,” says “These silken threads convey vibrations ings and fantasies over the walls. Saraceno. “People wash them, cut really well, so we are making them Stunned visitors entering this vast them up and draw on them, then they produce sounds, and asking musicians magic-lantern space projected ridicu- bring all these drawings together and to come and perform ‘arachno-con- lously small shadows. On the cosmic make them into spheres that are held certs,’” he explained. “They have to find scale of Saraceno’s works, human aloft by the sun and the wind.” One of frequencies at which they can dialogue beings are but grains of sand in the these airborne sculptures was launched with the spiders.” universe. ON AIR. CARTE BLANCHE À TOMÁS SARACENO Jusqu’au 6 janvier. Palais de Tokyo. 13, avenue du Président-Wilson. www.palaisdetokyo.com 106 7102 ,onecaraS sámoT oidutS ©