Artist Talks at SXSW 2024 in Austin

On the occasion of SXSW, conductor and musical director of Insula orchestra and accentus Laurence Equilbey and 2024 Villa Albertine resident Mathilde Lavenne will present their respective immersive projects, Beethoven Wars and The Land I Live On.

The presentations will be followed by an exhibition of two VR experiences, Mozart 360° and Beethoven 360°, and a screening of Mathilde Lavenne’s film, Tropics.

Learn more about these innovative projects below.

Beethoven Wars

Beethoven Wars was developed as part of the France 2030 “Spectacle vivant augmenté” call for projects. Aside from the importance of peace, law, and love, inherent values during Beethoven’s era, the project centers on two ideas:

Creating a bridge between heritage and 21st-century youth, through manga, VR, streaming, and communities.

Pooling and sharing our creations from a sustainable development angle. Though the project was created in France, it can be replicated elsewhere, thereby reducing our carbon footprint.

About Laurence Equilbey

Laurence Equilbey studied music in Paris, Vienna, and London, with conductors such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Eric Ericson, Denise Ham, Colin Metters, and Jorma Panula. As the conductor, musical director, and founder of Insula orchestra and accentus, Laurence Equilbey’s work embodies a blend of artistic excellence and inclusive and innovative projects. Every season at the Seine Musicale, Equilbey develops stage performances with artists from diverse backgrounds, including collaborations with Yoann Bourgeois, Marie-Agnès Gillot, la Fura dels Baus, and Mat Collishaw. Her career in the symphonic repertoire led her to conduct prestigious orchestras around the world.

The Land I Live On

The Land I live on is an immersive documentary in which virtual reality invites viewers to journey through different memories of a small Texas ghost town. In Corsicana, the first oil wells were discovered with the help of Annie Buchanan, a famous African-American psychic and descendant of slaves. Ruby Williams, director of the Martin Luther King Center, recounts the National Negro Hymn and remembers her father’s cotton fields. The film also incorporates never-before-seen archival testimony from the Texas Oil oral history collection provided by the Briscoe Center in Austin.

About Mathilde Lavenne

A 2016 graduate of the Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Mathilde Lavenne specializes in cinema, video art, and digital installations. Her collaborations with scientists and researchers have enriched and gradually transformed her approach. She is interested in the anthropological dimension of the societies she encounters and their relationship to the myths and cosmogonies that underpin some of their beliefs. Her work explores the phenomena of porosity between the worlds of the Living, the Media, and the Invisible. Her work is based on an artistic practice of digital and video art that stems from scientific and technological research protocols.