Christian Boltanski: Les archives du cœur

In September 2008, la maison rouge invites Christian Boltanski to create an exhibition around his 2005 installation, Le Cœur.

A question - Qui êtes-vous? (Who are you?) (2008) - leaps out at visitors as they approach the exhibition where, inside a pitch-black room, they come face to face with Le Coeur (The Heart): a light bulb that flicks on and off to the sound of the artist's heartbeat, filling the space with a perpetual movement between life and death. It is completed by a video work -Entre-temps (Between Times)(2003) – that shows fade-overs of the artist's face from childhood to the age of 60.

For the 37th Festival d'Automne à Paris, Christian Boltanski wished to take Le Coeur a stage further and compile what he calls "les archives du coeur" (archives from the heart).

The artist continues his investigation of "small memories", as he likes to remind us, by inviting each of the exhibition's visitors to record their own heartbeat in a specially-installed booth. In doing so they contribute to "Christian Boltanski, les archives du coeur." Visitors can, if they wish, buy a recording of their heartbeat on an analogue disc.

This archiving, initiated by la maison rouge, will take place simultaneously at the Christian Boltanskiexhibition at Magasin 3 in Stockholm. http://www.magasin3.com/intro_holder.html

The artist wishes to go on collecting these recordings alongside other projects that will be put to him over the next few years, thereby adding to the archives ad infinitum will be preserved in a sound library installed permanently on the island of Ejima in the Sea of Japan. "There was an island in the Sea of Japan, where all the men's hearts were gathered: here is a legend."(Christian Boltanski)

Christian Boltanski
Les archives du cœur