Recently in Paris

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Beat Takeshi Kitano 'Gosse de Peintre' @ Fondation Cartier
March 17 - September 10

'Beat Takeshi Kitano may be best known internationally as a filmmaker, but a new exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris shows off his skills as an artist. His paintings have appeared in his films, particularly Hani-bi, but at the Fondation Cartier, Takeshi Kitano was given entirely free rein to construct whatever exhibition he wanted. In response he has created a site-specific show that is half-art installation, half-children's playground. The exhibition includes various pieces that audiences can interact with, including a store where visitors can hire paintball guns to fire at the large dinosaurs in the space. Also part of the show is a giant sewing machine and various funfair attractions, including a marionette theatre and a waffle stand.' -- Creative Review





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Nemo: Le Festival Arts Numeriques d'Arcadia @ 104
April 8 - 17

'Nemo was devised with a new form of cinema in mind, made up of computer graphics, music video, animated graphic design, interactive installations and audiovisual performances. As for the famous “new images”, our International Panorama, (the visual creation of the year), bears witness to the incredible technical and creative explosion which has occurred over the last ten years.

'At a time when most innovative films are immediately visible on the Internet, and while we may feel that a threshold has been reached (temporarily, let us hope) in the quality and degree of innovation of projects, this ultimate panoramic offering will surely be the opportunity for much debate on what could be called the ‘post-Avatar horizon’. To put it simply, in the same way that NICT (New Information & Communication Technologies) have become ICT, new images have become simply… images (it was an almost punk concept when Nemo chose to be a multimedia festival rather than a festival of independent cinema).

'Participating artists: Kode9, Streetwise Opera, Mira Calix, Benoît Bourreau, Olivier Cadiot, Cécile Babiole and Jean-Michel Dumas, Michaël Sellam and his Black Metal crane, Abstract Birds, Kurt Hentschläger (one half of Granular Synthesis) with his Cluster, Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolaï/Raster Noton), PurForm, Gangpol & Mit, Juicy Panic, Raphaël Thibault and Hyun-Hwa Cho, Herman Kolgen, others.' -- Centquatre







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Gisele Vienne 'Showroom Dummies' @ Theatre de Gennevilliers
March 18 - 21





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The XX @ La Cigale
February 28





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Napalm Death @ Glaz'art
February 29





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Rick Owens @ Musee du Louvre
Gareth Pugh @ Palais de Tokyo
March 6 - 10







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Vinyl @ Maison Rouge
February 19 - May 16

'La maison rouge presents Vinyl, an exhibition of records and covers compiled by the British collector, publisher and curator Guy Schraenen. For more than 30 years, Guy Schraenen’s fascination with artists’ multiples (objects, catalogues, books, magazines) has led him to amass a unique and highly specialised collection on the theme of sound. Vinyl shows LPs from an acoustic and visual angle to illustrate how artists from the 1920s and throughout the twentieth century have experimented with language and sound. The exhibition presents close to 800 albums alongside tapes, CDs, specialist magazines, reference books, catalogues and artworks. As artists began to work with sound, and as records and covers became media for the visual arts, a new and extremely creative art form appeared.' -- Maison Rouge





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Salon du Livre @ Porte de Versailles
March 24 - 31

'This weekend marks the end of the annual Salon du Livre, Paris' most important book fair-- and for the "salon's" 30th anniversary, organizers pulled out all the stops with headlining talks from authors Salman Rushdie, Imre Kertész, Paul Auster, Emmanuel Carrère, and many others. Visitor numbers declined by about 7% from last year to an estimated 190,000 from 204,000, but some publishers reported heatlhy increases in sales.' -- publishingperspectives





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MF Doom @ Elysee Monmartre
March 3

'Dumile the metal-faced legendary rapper, aka DOOM aka MF DOOM was performing for the 1st time both in Europe and Paris on March, 3th 2010 at the Elysée Monmartre! This track is DOPE ! The music, the flow, the lyrics, everything is DOOMESQUE!!' -- swingsoulajazz





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Pete Doherty's secret gig @ Joseph
March 8

'Pete Doherty gave one of his “guerrilla gigs”, on Paris’s "fashion boulevard" on the Right Bank, the ultra-chic, avenue Montaigne, to celebrate the opening of the new Joseph store, barely a cigarette butt’s throw from Christian Dior, Valentino, Louis Vuitton and Dolce & Gabbana, et al. Doherty, poet and singer, held the audience enthralled in an hour-long set, accompanying himself on a battered Gibson, with tracks from The Libertines/ Carl Barât era and Babyshambles days, as well as his own songbook, including For Lovers, Can’t Stand Me Now, Last of the English Roses, What a Waster and Delivery. Two ballet dancers, in tattered tutus and Union Jack bodices, occasionally pirouetted in the background.' -- Sandi in the City





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No Sarkozy Day @ Paris
March 27

'A group of bloggers who claim to have 354,000 members on social networking site Facebook held a ‘No Sarkozy Day’ across France Saturday. Coming just one week after the French president suffered a humiliating defeat in regional elections, group organisers called for protests in town centres across France and at the Place de la Bastille in the Capital. The group has received support from artists, actors, writers and economists. They say that the French president has “failed in his duty to uphold the ideals” of the country. “Quite simply we are calling for Sarkozy’s resignation,” the group writes.' -- France24





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Lucien Freud: L'atelier @ Centre Pompidou
March 10 - July 20

'Composed of around fifty large-sized paintings, accompanied by a selection of graphic works and photographs of the artist's London studio from special collections (for the majority of them), the exhibition is organised around the theme of the artist's studio, a place behind closed doors which paved the foundations for Lucian Freud's painting and activity. Within a space of just over 900m2, the exhibition brings together the painter's main full-size compositions, known as Large Interiors, as well as his variations on former masters, his series of self-portraits and the recent and imposing portraits of Leigh Bowery or Big Sue, the painter's masterpieces.' -- Centre Pompidou





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Autechre/Russell Haswell @ Machine/Moulin Rouge
March 20

'The very short session of Russell Haswell let to be heard some great fat dirty analog noises, absolutely unbearable if you try to find something musical inside of his set, it was the real beginning of the party for everyone. Then, in a sort of hurry, Autechre began to play. As a habit now, they played in complete obscurity with only their machines glittering under their fingers. No light, no screen, no 5.1, no naked girls… nothing but one of the best electronic sound acts. Some massive “oversteps” grooves, splendid granular textures, details everywhere!' -- syl kougai







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Justin Bieber @ a balcony in Paris
February 21





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p.s. Hey. I'm not here. I'm on train to Brest this morning where my gang of collaborators (Gisele Vienne, Stephen O'Malley, Peter Rehberg, Fujiko Nakaya, Shiro Takatani, Patrick Riou, Jonathan Capdevielle, Jonathan Schatz, Margret Gudjonsdottir) and I will be trying to finesse our new theater piece 'This Is How You Will Disappear'. Except for a blink of a trip back to Paris to do the Christophe Honore film, I'll be in Brest until Tuesday the 20th. Here's how I reckon the blog will work while I'm there. Apart from two or three days that I'll specify in a minute, my plan is to do as close to a normal, interactive p.s. as I can every day. That will depend on how much internet access I'll have and my amount of down time during the theater rehearsals. My guess is that everything will run relatively smoothly, although the p.s. is likely to be a little more hurried than usual for the duration. There won't be full-fledged p.s.es next Saturday, when I have to catch a scarily early train back to Brest from Paris, and on Tuesday the 20th when I return to Paris from Brest in the morning. Next Friday, I shoot my scene for the Honore film, and if I can rush through a p.s. that morning before I head to the set, I will. I'm not sure if I can yet. In any case, the usual p.s. and I will be back here tomorrow. I don't think the post today needs any introduction. It's pretty self-explanatory. All right, enjoy the Day and your days, and I'll see you in something like twenty-four hours.