Place/Dates: Centre Pompidou – June 10-12, 2009 / “Sentiers qui Bifurquent” colloquium.

Description:

Conversation with Lars Von Trier

This event was one of the highlights of the IRCAM Agora Festival 2009 edition during which a colloquium entitled “Sentiers qui Bifurquent” was organized around the theme of “complexity”. This event attracted major figures from the world of science (Jean-Pierre Dupuy/Stanford Univeristy, Henri Atlan/philosopher, Lisa Randall/Harvard University …) as well as the world of the arts (Mark Danielewski/writer, Brian Ferneyhough/composer, Hector Parra/composer, Renaud Camus/writer …).

The colloquium, organised as a multi-disciplinary event, also included two public events aimed at a wider audience. One of these which took place in the Centre Pompidou Cinema 1 Hall featured a networked video conference dialogue between Lars Von Trier (in Denmark) and Brian Ferneyhough and Mark Danielewski (in Paris). The dialogue was mainly concerned about how the three artists (a film maker, a composer, a writer) conceived their works in their respective disciplines. A filmed interview with Henri Atlan was produced excerpts of which were shown on the IRCAM website.

Objective:

Create a network event with very high quality content accessible to the general public. Learn how to deal with networking in the context of different artistic institutions (Centre Pompidou in Paris and Zentropa in Denmark) with highly different technical and artistic cultures.

Results:

The event attracted a full house in the Cinema 1 Hall in the Centre Pompidou and was followed by a much wider audience via live streaming open to all Internet users.

Target group: General audience.

Number of participants/visitors/audience :

• 400 in the Cinema 1 Hall in the Centre Pompidou

• Wider Internet audience (the number was hard to evaluate objectively).