New & Now

Portraits

Regions

Creation

5ac905e1-5385-461f-b8c4-a860a7c73ac8|d050f468-fe33-45e6-ba01-e950779b9856|53ec6dbd-9d76-4515-87ac-06763afe01e9

The Villa Albertine Magazine accompanies the launch of this new cultural institution from France in the United States. An online publication focused on the major issues of our time, and driven by the conviction that exchanges between creators, researchers and cultural professionals are the key to a possible common ground.

Editorial

9efa4004-2afa-4429-997f-bdf2c7e885ad|38614985-71d9-4b0d-be04-b2587e660b97|532b5d0a-63cd-4a05-952c-3116493b1b86

At the Night of Ideas event at Harvard University, Jean Arnaud, a co-founder of a startup focused on providing AI-enabled immersive learning environments, discussed the potential of combining artificial intelligence and immersive technologies in education. Arnaud explored how these technologies could revolutionize the way we approach learning, with the use of avatars combined with AI yielding exceptional benefits for students, including promoting personal development and inclusion. However, he also shows the importance of recognizing the limits of these thechnologies, which should be used as a tool to amplify human intelligence and ideas, not to control them.  

The Transformative Potential of AI and Immersive Technologies in Education 

b6f57187-246e-4930-9fd3-b1db43409c05|532b5d0a-63cd-4a05-952c-3116493b1b86|32d61ff0-ddf0-475d-aa75-177a9f9a0016

The term resilience, originally defined as the ability of a material to bounce back, has evolved through its use by various disciplines, including ecology and economics. Yet measuring a city's resilience remains elusive. In this article, echoing her intervention at the Night of Ideas in Monterrey, architect Ophélia Mantz proposes to consider the notion of civitas and adaptation as a more precise term that reflects the progressive change of the urban system in response to crises. The concepts of ecosophy and temporal ecology are also mobilized in the quest to modify our lifestyles, to build a convivial society based on well-being and quality of life.

“Doing more with less,” or the art of being resilient

afc8c401-5e13-4d80-ad88-368e76a01ae4|38614985-71d9-4b0d-be04-b2587e660b97|32d61ff0-ddf0-475d-aa75-177a9f9a0016

One can be a historian of the United States, a specialist in Black history and theories of Afrodiasporic descent, and yet be struck by the specificity of Atlanta. This was Maboula Soumahoro's experience during her residency, and she concluded that theoretical knowledge—such as the conditions of emergence of a figure like Martin Luther King or of Hip Hop culture—does not replace physical experience in understanding how a Southern city became a major home for the Black-African diaspora. 

Atlanta, Black Identity and Echoes From the Atlantic 

d050f468-fe33-45e6-ba01-e950779b9856|2c9b154c-87ad-48f7-a130-3c56636020ac|1dab5911-1677-4ea9-92cb-9d0e611975a8

At the age of 23, Franco-British conductor Stéphanie Childress has already made an important impact on the world of orchestras. Currently one of the very few women to conduct an orchestra in the U.S. as assistant conductor with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, she has managed to get away from it all as part of her residency with Villa Albertine, to discover other great American orchestras. Her objective is to determine if and how a city's culture affects the way its orchestra sounds. And what part women now play in this story.

When a Young Woman Takes the Baton

c32859cc-16d0-4e81-9322-ea27c52b4218|32c232f3-1e40-473b-a495-cd5750ceb513|08bd9ba3-6497-4baa-8bcf-a28252dff2ac

Is the notion of landscape still relevant in an urban environment, especially when we talk about the city par excellence: Chicago? Architect and researcher Jennifer Buyck questions, at the age of anthropocene, the ways to renew the link between the living and the urban. It is by strolling along the river, camera in hand, that she investigated how it has played such an important role in the construction of the city,  and how it could play an equally important role in the necessary ecological turn of the metropolitan construction.


Walking along Chicago's rivers

53ec6dbd-9d76-4515-87ac-06763afe01e9|1dab5911-1677-4ea9-92cb-9d0e611975a8|6ad3de1f-e6ee-4882-86ad-4fb6b48c4537

How to read, see and exhibit Yvonne Rainer's work today? This was the question at the heart of Arlène Berceliot Courtin's residency. In this interview with Jo-ey Tang, she discusses the legacy of the iconic American dancer and choreographer, a leading figure in postmodern and minimalist dance.

Yvonne Rainer: Portrait of a Dancer as a Reader

e00e67ee-a43d-4092-86eb-47d407fc317e|bf9de5fa-cad5-4799-80f1-a7f851f6a423|06ad6e5c-6df0-41d6-97ec-94f676228624

Strange as it may seem, Art History has been late in addressing the construction of racial identities. Yet the questions of what is seen, what is shown, the invention of "blackness" and "whiteness" are central, as Anne Lafont has brilliantly demonstrated. The historian navigates between the periods of the 18th and 19th century, and has shown how a look is built then on the Black bodies, in a manner consistent with the formation of an artistic canon. Canon which is today reappropriated and questioned by Black artists.  

Art History in the Creation of Racial Identity

1dab5911-1677-4ea9-92cb-9d0e611975a8|9385e80d-fc6f-43ce-8158-c1ddeea60239|831d8f69-29ac-476b-9cf3-da0a0bc00c01

New York is a sonorous city, one could even say that it is a city that has a taste for noise. It draws much of its energy from this, a vitality that soundscape artist Michel Risse and his company Décor Sonore came to explore during their residency at Villa Albertine. Multi-instrumentalist, composer, author and electroacoustician, Michel Risse studied music and percussion, which he practiced in numerous rock and jazz bands. In 1972, he began to develop an interest in sound creation in free-space, and to compose his first "sound decors". His encounter in New York with the sound painting collective Strike Anywhere gave rise to various experiments in Battery Park and elsewhere... The opportunity to define this function of sound landscaper that Michel Risse has been cultivating for 50 years, in the wake of composer John Cage who declared: "I have never listened to a sound without appreciating it. The only problem with sounds is music.

Michel Risse : Revealing the Soundscape of New York

ad49f18b-128f-436a-8e9e-83df3fa22c46|5ac905e1-5385-461f-b8c4-a860a7c73ac8|88210fa5-4689-4083-b139-cb2c2b84ed8c

A philosopher, economist, writer and musician, the Senegalese Felwine Sarr is one of the most prominent intellectual figures of the moment. In recent years, his work has taken on a new form: that of plays. Two of them are currently on tour in the United States, and carry this singular voice that invites us to believe in the possibility of utopia.

Felwine Sarr: Reinvest History and Utopia

32d61ff0-ddf0-475d-aa75-177a9f9a0016|06ad6e5c-6df0-41d6-97ec-94f676228624|91c3d061-9d0c-4310-ae7a-5eec3832ca9a

From traditional Mexican art to contemporary border art, let us look back at Art History at the US–Mexico border. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera have given their fingerprints, Mexican muralism left its mark here. The voice of Chicanos still resonates. Today’s border artists are walking in their footsteps, like walking a tightrope between two countries held together by force. Is passion possible in a marriage of convenience? Will they turn divides into hyphens? French author of documentaries Aude-Emilie Judaïque explored the border as part of her Villa Albertine residency to answer these questions.

The roots of border art

d75cd264-a199-41cc-943e-9d728f1cb3ed|b2b6474b-d34a-4525-bc0a-a14ee0e694c9|831d8f69-29ac-476b-9cf3-da0a0bc00c01

Emma Goldman was a figure of anarchism, a political movement whose significance at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in the United States has since been forgotten. Filmmaker Yolande Zauberman came to New York to follow in the footsteps of this young Russian Jewish refugee, who became a powerful woman and a public figure of feminism and workers' rights. Here is an intimate—and therefore political—portrait.

Yolande Zauberman: “I have a firm belief in the political power of intimacy”

8fd7010f-d890-42f7-8683-1dc45e213a38|da462223-ec92-4e5e-be27-78c1cb837841|831d8f69-29ac-476b-9cf3-da0a0bc00c01

Co-writing a script with a machine... what if that were possible? Such was the bet Simon Bouisson made during his Albertine residency in California. Here, he tells us about his sci-fi-like working method alongside a co-author capable of unfolding a dizzying maze of potential paths, devoid of ethics and logic. 

A Script Signed "AI"

5ac905e1-5385-461f-b8c4-a860a7c73ac8|53ec6dbd-9d76-4515-87ac-06763afe01e9|1dab5911-1677-4ea9-92cb-9d0e611975a8

What is left of San Francisco's queer history? Writer Hélène Giannecchini came to SF with Sasha J. Blondeau and François Chaignaud, with whom she is preparing the show "Cortèges" for the Philharmonie de Paris. Though the hoped-for encounter with her story is more difficult than expected, there is one place that brings back all of those who have left their mark on the history of struggles for LGBTQIA+ rights: Aunt Charlie's Lounge.

Aunt Charlie's Lounge: The Untraceable Queer History of San Francisco 

On May 21, the 2022 Night of Idea took place in New York and offered a two-part event in Manhattan and in Brooklyn, for an audience of nearly 1,500 people. A video report by Raphaël Bourgois and Romain Thomassin  allows to take the measure of the event, of its richness and diversity.

Where Are We Going?:Night of Ideas 2022 in New York

08bd9ba3-6497-4baa-8bcf-a28252dff2ac|b6f57187-246e-4930-9fd3-b1db43409c05|38614985-71d9-4b0d-be04-b2587e660b97

In a joint interview, Curator and Deputy Director of the Department of Islamic Art at the Musée du Louvre Judith Henon, and Sarah Schleuning, the Margot B. Perot Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), discuss the scientific, historical, and contemporary issues surrounding the exhibition "Cartier and the Arts of Islam: In search of Modernity.". The objective is to understand, beyond the aesthetic interest, what this exhibition, which was first presented in Paris, tells us about the place of Islamic arts at the time of the Cartier brothers and their place today in France and the United States.