Archive
Vienna in Provence
I usually don’t blog about anything but literature. Today’s a bit different. I’ve been to the Carrières de Lumière in Les Baux-de-Provence, in the South of France. Imagine, you’re in a quarry transformed into a showroom. The quarries are no longer exploited but were used to extract stone to build the nearby village of Les Baux de Provence. The quarry has been covered to create a unique space to project multimedia shows. You’re in the quarry, the walls are about 10 meters high, there’s a ceiling to have the audience in the dark. You wander in the former quarry and images are projected on the stone walls of the quarry.
There’s currently a multimedia show entitled “Klimt and Vienna. A century of gold and colours”. It starts with pictures of Vienna and the art of the time before Klimt and other artists started the Vienna Secession movement. Then you see pictures by Klimt and Schiele. To go further in the century, there are pictures of Hundertwasser’s work.
It’s an incredible experience. We were surrounded by images from floor to ceiling and bathed in a musical soundtrack of the time. It felt like being in the paintings instead of watching them or like passing through the canvas and entering the world of the artist. It’s a fantastic experience and I wanted to share it. It’s totally different from contemplating paintings in a museum. You know how it is, it’s hard to forget your environment, the people walking around you. Here, you’re in a dark space, the sound of other people is drowned in the music and it feels like being in an enchanted artistic world.
I’ve taken pictures with my phone; they’re not great but might help you imagine what it felt like. Have you ever been to that kind of show?
See the people on the photo compared to the size of the image? Look at the floor.
Book Around the Corner 