Hybrid

Revue des arts et médiations humaines 

6 | 2019
L'écoute

Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with

headphones
Marie Vicet
Translator: Tresi Murphy

Electronic version
URL: https://journals.openedition.org/hybrid/523
DOI: 10.4000/hybrid.523
ISSN: 2276-3538

This article is a translation of:

Les Immatériaux : visite de l’exposition au casque - URL : https://journals.openedition.org/hybrid/513
[fr]

Publisher
Presses universitaires de Vincennes
 

Electronic reference
Marie Vicet, “Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with headphones”, Hybrid [Online], 6 | 2019,
Online since 04 November 2019, connection on 13 April 2022. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/
hybrid/523 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/hybrid.523

This text was automatically generated on 13 April 2022.

Revue Hybrid
 Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with headphones 1

Les Immatériaux: a tour of the

exhibition with headphones
Marie Vicet
Translation : Tresi Murphy

1 Sound has today become an essential component in the work of certain artists but it is
also important for many curators in the exhibitions they organise. It occupies a very
specific place around which an exhibition can be built or even defined. Pascale
Cassagnau explains that “Exhibitions can be “voiced”, with a “soundtrack” that
constitutes a principle of reflection and a piece of art itself that produces an
interpretation.”1 But well before sound art became as common as it has in recent
shows, one exhibition, considered by many art historians as a milestone in the history
of museums and exhibitions2, had already used sound in a most original way, offering
an unprecedented viewing experience to visitors, where listening was an integral part.
The curators of the exhibition, Les Immatériaux, for the Centre de Création Industrielle
du Centre Pompidou in 19853 [Fig. 1] were the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard and
the curator Thierry Chaput. The use of a sound system raised the question of how the
public would react and understand it, as we will see later on. To tour the exhibition,
and its sixty-one sites, visitors were given a pair of wireless headphones that
transmitted the soundtrack. This unexpected approach on the part of the exhibition’s
curators, to our knowledge the first, drew the public in droves. 4 In this article, we will
review this unusual experiment. We will put the exhibition team’s original intentions
into perspective with regard to the soundtrack and the way it was transmitted, with
the public’s actual experience. While the visitors initially showed enthusiasm for the
visit with headphones, they were also, for the most part, quite thrown by the
experience, even bewildered, as they went through the exhibition with the headphones
on.

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 Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with headphones 2

Fig. 1

Jean-François Lyotard at the opening night of the exhibition Les Immatériaux on 26 March, 1985 (L to
R: Claude Pompidou, Thierry Chaput, Jean-François Lyotard and Jack Lang)
© Centre Pompidou, MNAM, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Jean-Claude Planchet.

An exhibition that considered itself a work of art

2 The subject of the exhibition was “postmodernity”5, and it was intended as a reflection
on the times based on questions of intangibility that were coming to the fore with the
development of new technologies.6 It was to go down in exhibition history for a number
of reasons: firstly, it was the only exhibition that Jean-François Lyotard ever curated,
and the first ever organised by a philosopher.7 The subject of the exhibition was also a
reason for its notoriety, as were the design and scenography involved. The
“dramaturgy”, aimed at “provoking a feeling of the end of an era and the sense of
anxious curiosity that emerges at the dawn of postmodernity”8 made an impact, as did
the variety and mix of the objects on show. The exhibition included some very recently
designed industrial robots, computers, holograms, interactive sound installations, 3D
films, paintings, photographs and sculptures (including a bas-relief from ancient Egypt)
but also pieces by contemporary artists such as Dan Graham, Joseph Kosuth and
Giovanni Anselmo. The wide range of domains the objects on show covered, (painting,
biology, architecture, astrophysics, music, food, clothing, etc.) that were at times
gathered together in one site as they illustrated a given theme within the exhibition,
made the Les Immatériaux exhibition a ground-breaking event.
3 The other main characteristic of Les Immatériaux was the genre of exhibition it was, as
its curators devised it as an exhibition that was not artistic, documentary,
encyclopaedic, or performative, but in fact, all these things at once. It was a hybrid
genre, a mix, but not a synthesis, of many genres. The exhibition created its own object
by blurring the lines between traditional categories. “This hybridisation led to a sense
of blurring, an illegibility that raise many questions.” 9 As the press release stated, Les

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 Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with headphones 3

Immatériaux was built as “a non-exhibition” 10 that was meant to “question the

traditional presentation of exhibitions handed down from the salons of the 18 th century
and galleries.” 11Furthermore, Lyotard, Chaput and the team at the CCI wanted the
exhibition to be an entity in and of itself, like a piece of art. In 1985, Lyotard declared
that “The team is not attempting to create an educational exhibition, for example to
explain new technologies…, but an exhibition that is itself a work of art.” 12The press
release continued, “It is not about explaining, it is about making the public aware of the
issues in the forms in which they appear in the arts, in literature, in technoscience and
in lifestyles. This show only really clearly presents some of its effects, as a piece of art
would do.”13 The idea of “making a piece of art” was at the very core of the project. As
Chantal Noël, a member of the exhibition team, explained “The presentation,
installation and organisation of the space were not subject to the objects on show.
There was an artistic approach to the relationships between the volumes, the colours
and the sounds.”14 In fact, the intention of the team was to redefine the exhibition
“medium” with a show that combined an artistic, philosophical and scientific approach
to the 20th century.
4 The soundtrack15 was one of the tools used as part of this approach. Visitors listened to
it on wireless headphones handed out at the entrance to the exhibition, and it was
designed as an extra experience for the public, turning the visit into an audio-visual
experience. The idea for the soundtrack16 came from Lyotard himself who initially
intended to write the texts for the different sites with the addition of well-chosen
writings by famous authors. In the end, he ran out of time and the task fell to his
colleague Dolorès Rogozinski who chose and collected various texts by philosophers
and writers17, and in some cases wrote texts that resonated with the theme of the sites.
18
Instead of the voice-overs reading texts, some sites had recordings, such as pieces of
music recorded at the IRCAM, or sounds that came from the sites themselves. The
wireless headphones were supplied by Phillips and were prototypes being used for the
very first time [Fig. 2]. The exhibition space was equipped with around thirty infrared
transmitters that broadcast one or more of the texts to the headphones during the visit
according to the zone they were in. There were thirty-one zones in all. 19 As Lyotard
explained to the press “The visitor walks around with the headphones on […] and the
broadcasts change according to each zone. The sections are two to three minutes long
and they are constantly repeated. They are transmitted by infrared onto mirrors that
means that on the ground, the sound is very clear.”20

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 Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with headphones 4

Fig. 2

The Philips WH200 wireless headphones used for Les Immatériaux, 1985
© Gérard Chiron

The soundtrack and misunderstandings

5 Visitors to the exhibition put on their headphones and walked into the exhibition space
through an entrance hall where they found themselves in front of an Egyptian bas-relief,
a fragment from the outside of a temple in Karnak, on which a goddess gives the
Pharaoh Nectanebo II the breath of life. The soundtrack transmitted the sound of
breathing. The exhibition Inventaire wrote, of this site: “Humans received life and
meaning: the soul. They had to return them, intact and perfected. Do they have a
destiny today? This is one of the main questions of this exhibition.” 21 In an essay
written as part of a study led by the Expo-Media observatory 22 on Les Immatériaux,
Charles Perraton, a communications professor at the University of Québec in Montreal,
wrote a phenomenological account of the visit, describing it as follows:
“The adventure begins as I am handed a pair of headphones that will accompany
me throughout my visit, “If you so wish”, they say at the entrance. I take it to be
proof of the exhibition curators’ didactic and educational intentions. As I listen to
the first part of the information transmitted by the headphones, I conclude that it
will help me to understand the content of the exhibition, and to experience the
intimate nature of the communicative relationship it creates. I start to think it
might be a chance for the visitor to personalise the exchange by introducing the
possibility of a discussion to the enunciation. So, initially I see the headphones as a
means to speak to me and help me to understand. But very early on I understand
that it is not really there to make me listen (to an explanation) but to make me
hear (words and sounds).” 23

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 Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with headphones 5

6 Indeed, instead of providing information or explanations about the works of art,

objects and scientific inventions presented, that the visitor will have expected to hear
in the headphones, they transmit readings, music and various noises according on the
zone they were in [Fig. 3]; [Fig. 4]. The different elements were “chosen for their
emotional and/or associative value, and were not intended to help with the visit.” 24 The
exhibition had no didactic or educational intention, but instead wished to appeal to the
visitors’ emotions and feelings. The intention was “to aim not for the public’s ability to
absorb information but to appeal to its senses, its sense of aesthetics. For what we have
to say, we propose to awaken a response in visitors on the level of their emotions, not
their understanding”.25 The texts were never legends explaining what was shown at
each site. Neither was there any correspondence between the sound transmission zones
and what was shown at the different sites as a text could just as easily work for four
sites as one.26 Lyotard explained to the journalist François Dumont: “So the relationship
between the sound and the visualisation is a question of tension, it is about the
imagination rather than the concept, which corresponds to our project in that we want
to remove resistance.”27
7 Consequently, the sound was an addition to the visual elements of the exhibition and
created an extra layer of meaning. However, visitors who were not warned in advance
of the conceptual nature of the texts were taken aback, to say the least, by what they
heard in their headphones. As Nathalie Heinich explained as part of an inquiry she led
during the exhibition. Some visitors thought they were being give a traditional
museum tour:
“There was […] a misunderstanding as to […] the status of the texts that were
transmitted, that visitors were used to taped exhibition tours that were common at
the time for some big exhibitions at the Grand-Palais for example or in some
museums, which tended to constitute an “explanatory commentary”, while this was
more of a companion piece, a counterpoint, a creation of actual conditions, a work
of association, but above all it was not an “explanation”. This led to a certain
amount of perplexity as to the commentary that wasn’t one, and that added
literary, philosophical and other texts to images that were already quite obscure
(or, more to the point, images and objects, the point of which was not always
crystal clear), that could have provided, for some visitors, an explanation as to the
meaning. So, we understand the regrets expressed by a visitor in a post-exhibition
session when they said that it needed a permanent commentary from someone who
was qualified, and that the current one was not enough.” 28

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 Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with headphones 6

Fig. 3

A visitor at the « Arômes simulés » exhibit at Les Immatériaux

© Centre Pompidou, MNAM, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Jean-Claude Planchet.

Fig. 4

Les Immatériaux, a view of the « Labyrinthe du langage » site

© Centre Pompidou, MNAM, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Jean-Claude Planchet.

8 The discrepancy between what the visitors expected to hear in the headphones and
what they actually heard led to much misunderstanding. Instead of enlightening them
about what they were seeing, the soundtrack pushed them even further away. Wearing
the headphones and listening to the texts transmitted tended to confuse and destabilise
the visitors, which was tacitly the intention of the team behind the exhibition: “We
wanted to avoid identification: we wanted to create a feeling of destabilisation about

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 Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with headphones 7

identity today.”29 The exhibition had been designed, in different ways, to create
disorientation. The curators built it so that the visitor chose their own path through,
with five possible options that fanned out from the Théâtre du non-corps 30 which was
made up of five dioramas created by Jean-Claude Fall and presented at the entrance to
the exhibition. These five paths corresponded to one of the themes developed in the
exhibition which were: Matériau (material), Matrice (matrix), Matériel (material), Matière
(matter) and Maternité (maternity), each of which brought up a question: “where do the
messages we receive come from (what is their maternity)? what do they refer to (to what
matter do they refer)? what code can be used to decode them (what is their matrix)? on
what are they written (what is their material)?, how are they transmitted to their recipients
(what is the material of this dynamic)?” 31The labyrinth-like design of the exhibition, in
fact, participated in the creation of a new exhibition format that corresponded to the
post-modern era we had entered. Lyotard summed it up as follows: “The exhibition is a
postmodern dramaturgy. There is no hero, no narrative. It is a warren of situations
organised according to questions: our sites. A fabric of voices transmitted by portable
headphones: our soundtrack. The visitors, in their solitude, are summoned to choose
their path at the crossroads of track that holds them back and voices that call to
them.” 32The tour took place in semi-darkness over a layout of metal track. The
exhibition’s press release explained: “Here, picture rails have been replaced by tracks
of varying transparency and opaqueness that call on different types of perspectives.
The light is completely controlled, giving them intensity, warmth, colour and limits.
The layout of the hanging half-screens allows the visitor to choose their path, to a
certain extent. They are not forced, they are led.” 33Visitors were free to choose their
own paths through the exhibition; all avenues were open to them. 34 This did not help
the public’s understanding. The intentional lack of explanation in the exhibition
compounded the issue: “No chronological or thematic points of reference, just a sense
of ‘drifting’ where the visitor appears to have total freedom of movement, but zero
control of the space.” 35Visitors did not let it lie, they were already quite disoriented by
the different blurring effects inside the Immatériaux, so they nevertheless looked for
explanations. As Nathalie Heinich explained in her study: “Very often people would ask
for explanations at the entrance, worried about the actual contents of the exhibition.
This would also happen inside, or even as they were leaving, where some French
visitors would try to get their hands on the English-language brochures intended for
foreign visitors in the absence of any other explanatory documents (most of the visitors
questioned as they left did not realise that the exhibition did have a small “journal”,
most probably because they didn’t notice the bookshop).” 36
9 While the exhibition did indeed have a Petit Journal available in the bookshop, this was
not really the same as an exhibition brochure distributed to visitors at the entrance, as
it was not free of charge, even though it only cost 6 francs. However, even if all of the
visitors had the exhibition’s Petit Journal in their possession, they would most certainly
have had problems reading it as the space was very dimly lit, and this was most
certainly the case for those who bought it. Nevertheless, it would have been a great
help in terms of understanding what was on show in the different sites and what was
transmitted through the headphones. In fact, the Petit Journal was filled with
information, describing what the visitor was looking at, explaining what it meant and
also explaining what was being transmitted in the headphones. The journalist Jean
Launay described it as follows: “About fifteen pages that cover the events that we can
expect throughout the visit with the addition of informational (how it works) and

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 Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with headphones 8

editorial (what it inspires) comments. The concision and clarity of the writing is
absolutely remarkable.” 37 In fact, the Petit Journal was an important source of
information for visitors, much more than the catalogue, in particular, Album et
Inventaire that was not really a traditional catalogue but included on one side various
copies of work documents and on the other a technical sheet that went through the
exhibitions’ structure and various sites without ever really going into what was actually
on show.

A blurring effect
10 While the content of the soundtrack was not always understood, this was compounded
by technical issues with the infrared headphone system that the public was unfamiliar
with and did not know how to use properly, further adding to the feelings of disruption
provoked by the exhibition: “This lead to recurring “breakdowns”, some real (due to
cutting edge technology), but many – as the guards at the entrance noticed – purely
fictional: the visitor, faced with an abrupt ending in a voiceover they were listening to
as they walked, would conclude that the headphones were broken as they were used to
obeying the text rather than the other way round, not understanding that it stopped
and started because they, themselves were walking.” 38
11 These blurring effects and interruption of the soundtrack were, of course, due to the
infrared transmission system. But they were also designed and even planned by the
exhibition team in the design phase. As Francesca Gallo pointed out: “any malfunction
in the transmission of a message was, paradoxically, part of the project 39.” The losses of
signal between two zones, the breaks in listening were the transposition to a museum
of the experience one could have in a car while driving, as the radio moves out of a
transmission zone. This is how the experience is illustrated in a document from the
preparatory stages that is reproduced in the Album des Immatériaux to explain how the
team envisaged these breaks: “When travelling hundreds of kilometres from San Diego
to Santa Barbara by car, you drive through a conurbation zone. It is neither country
nor city, nor is it the desert. […] The radio has to be readjusted a number of times as
you travel through different radio transmission zones. It is quite nebulous, where the
materials (buildings, roads) are states of energy in metastasis. The streets and
boulevards have no facades, information circulates by invisible radiation and
interfaces.” 40
12 Consequently, this exhibition with equipment participated in the construction of a
“postmodern” space-time where time took over from space, fencing it in or sketching
it. “The time it takes to move around marks the surface of the space, the space/surface
relationship is now a sort of itinerary.”41 In this new space-time, the visitor-spectator
experimented with the exhibition by walking, by becoming a wandering spectator. 42
The augmented visitor found themselves, thanks to the headphones, “in the position of
a reader, or as a reader, like the sign on the head of a tape recorder,” 43 was the correct
analysis made by Jean-Louis Boissier. In a postmodern world, as the team behind the
exhibition saw it, man had become a post-human and the new realities of the world
replaced the Man/Nature interface with the Man/Technique interface. In his editorial,
Élie Théofilakis mused that: “Technological devices are already an integral part of our
own knowledge toolbox and our nervous system. Consequently, man is sharing what is
human, and will perhaps be humanised (outside the very constraints of natural

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 Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with headphones 9

order).”44 But this visit with headphones was a way of expressing the world’s passage
into the postmodern era, by causing the public to lose their frame of reference, and
increasing its isolation. The press release announced that “Silence reigns over the
exhibition.”45 Indeed, the headphones closed visitors off from one another, preventing
them from communicating and exchanging views as one visitor remarked: “I went with
two or three friends but we couldn’t speak to one another. I saw people I knew and had
to remove the headphones, etc… and so we were obliged, in a way, to leave the
exhibition, to step out, at least for the sound part, in order to connect with someone
else, to talk or even make a comment on what we were seeing.” 46Taking off the
headphones was the same as leaving the exhibition and the experience it offered.
13 In fact, this exhibition was above all, an event to be experienced, and the headphones
were an integral part of the experience. However, there was a huge gap between the
exhibition’s cross disciplinary approach where lines were crossed between categories
and the various literary and philosophical texts transmitted through the headphones
and what the public actually experienced. As Heinich noted in her study: “The first
conclusion we can come to is […] that the instances where the actual experience of the
visitors coincides with the potential of the product on offer are extremely rare 47.” The
reason being that Lyotard and his team proposed “an exhibition that was intended to
trigger critical reflection on the part of the visitor but, at the same time, omitted to
provide any form of explanation. So how could it succeed?” 48, as Jérôme Glicenstein so
rightfully pointed out. However, in the end, the intention was not that the visitor
understand what they were seeing or hearing. No one had shown them the rules of the
game: “The postmodern individual is someone who has been invited to play a game
without being told the rules. They don’t know what they can win or lose, but they have
to figure it out. It is up to “The man without qualities” to work out the rules alone.”
49
They were suddenly equipped but alone to face the onslaught of messages. The
exhibition asked more questions than it answered. In addition, the curators had no
intention of answering. Visitors left with more questions than they had when they
arrived.50

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Altshuler Bruce, Biennials and Beyond - Exhibitions That Made Art History: 1962-2002, Londres,
Phaidon, 2013.

Boissier Jean-Louis, « La question des nouveaux médias numériques », in Bernadette

Dufrêne (dir.), Centre Pompidou, trente ans d’histoire : 1977-2007, Paris, Centre Georges
Pompidou, 2007, pp. 374‑390.

Chaput Thierry and Lyotard Jean-François (dir.), Les Immatériaux : Album et Inventaire,
catalogue d’exposition, Paris, Éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, 1985.

Cassagnau Pascale, Une idée du Nord : des excursions dans la création sonore contemporaine,
Paris, Beaux-arts de Paris éditions, 2015.

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Carrier Christian (dir.), Les Immatériaux (au Centre Georges Pompidou en 1985), Étude de
l’événement exposition et de son public, Paris, Expo Media, 1986.

Centre Pompidou, press release Les Immatériaux, 1985. [Online] https://

www.centrepompidou.fr/media/document/de/0d/de0d76bbe203394435216a975bea8618/
normal.pdf [consulted July 18 2018].

Délis Philippe, « Architecture : l’espace-temps autrement... », in Élie Théofilakis (dir.), Modernes

et après : Les Immatériaux, Paris, Autrement, 1985, pp. 21‑25.

Dumont François, « Le train fantôme du Docteur Lyotard », Le Matin de Paris, March 28 1985, pp.
23‑24.

Gallo Francesca, « Ce n’est pas une exposition, mais une œuvre d’art. L’exemple des Immatériaux
de Jean-François Lyotard », Appareil, n° 10 (Lyotard et la surface d'inscription numérique), 2012.
[Online] http://appareil.revues.org/860 [consulted November 08 2018].

Glicenstein Jérôme, « « Les Immatériaux » : exposition, œuvre, événement », in Françoise

Coblence et Michel Enaudeau (dir.), Lyotard et les arts, Paris, Klincksieck, 2014, pp. 201‑213.

Heinich Nathalie, « Un évènement culturel », in Christian Carrier (dir.), Les Immatériaux (au
Centre Georges Pompidou en 1985), Étude de l’événement exposition et de son public, Paris, Expo
Media, 1986, pp. 25‑123.

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(Landmark Exhibitions Issue), Automne 2009. [Online] https://www.tate.org.uk/research/
publications/tate-papers/12/les-immateriaux-revisited-innovation-in-innovations [consulted
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numérique), 2012. [Online] http://journals.openedition.org/appareil/93 [consulted September 19
2018].

Hudek Antony, « From Over- to Sub-Exposure: The Anamnesis of Les Immatériaux », Tate Papers,
12 (Landmark Exhibitions Issue), Automne 2009. [Online] https://www.tate.org.uk/research/
publications/tate-papers/12/from-over-to-sub-exposure-the-anamnesis-of-les-immateriaux
[consulted July 18 2018].

Launay Jean, « Les Immatériaux », Le Monde, 28 mars 1985. [Online] https://lemonde.fr/

archives/article/1985/03/28/les-immateriaux_2742266_1819218.html?
xtmc=les_immateriaux&xtcr=1 [consulted September 10 2018].

Lyotard (Rogozinski) Dolorès, « On the Development of the Texts for the Les Immatériaux
Soundtrack (Sur le développement du texte pour la bande-son des Immatériaux) », Working
Paper n° 2, édité par Andreas Broeckmann, juillet 2019. [Online] http://les-immateriaux.net/wp-
content/uploads/2019/06/LIR-WP2_Dolores-Lyotard_Soundtrack_2019.pdf [consulted July 2
2019].

Merlant Philippe, « La règle du jeu : matérialiser Les Immatériaux, entretien avec l’équipe du
C.C.I. », in Élie Théofilakis (dir.), Modernes et après : Les Immatériaux, Paris, Autrement, 1985, pp.
15‑20.

Perraton Charles, « L’œuvre des petits récits autonomes », in Christian Carrier (dir.), Les
Immatériaux (au Centre Georges Pompidou en 1985), Étude de l’événement exposition et de son
public, Paris, Expo Media, 1986, pp. 13-24.

Rajchman John, « Les Immatériaux or How to Construct the History of Exhibitions », Tate Papers,
12 (Landmark Exhibitions Issue), Automne 2009. [Online] https://www.tate.org.uk/research/

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publications/tate-papers/12/les-immateriaux-or-how-to-construct-the-history-of-exhibitions,
[consulted September 20 2018].

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Théofilakis Élie, « Condition humaine, l’interface ou la transmodernité », in Élie Théofilakis (dir.),

Modernes et après : Les Immatériaux, Paris, Autrement, 1985, pp. IX‑XI.

Théofilakis Élie, « Les petits récits de chrysalide, entretien Jean-François Lyotard - Élie
Théofilakis », in Élie Théofilakis (dir.), Modernes et après : Les Immatériaux, Paris, Autrement,
1985, pp. 4‑14.

Wunderlich Antonia, Der Philosoph im Museum. Die Ausstellung « Les Immatériaux » von Jean
François Lyotard, Bielefeld, Transcript Verlag, 2008.

NOTES
1. Pascale Cassagnau, Une idée du Nord : des excursions dans la création sonore contemporaine,
Paris, Beaux-arts de Paris éditions, 2015, p. 96.
2. On this subject, see various articles in the 12th edition of the online magazine Tate Papers,
special “Landmark Exhibitions Issue”, [Online] https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/
tate-papers/12 [consulted July 20 2018]. It is also referred to as “one of the exhibitions that made
art history” in Bruce Altshuler, Biennials and Beyond - Exhibitions That Made Art History:
1962-2002, London, Phaidon, 2013.
3. The exhibition took place from March 28 to July 15 1985 on the fifth floor of the Centre
Georges Pompidou.
4. Some visitors went to the exhibition just to try the headphones. See Nathalie Heinich, "Un
évènement culturel", in Christian Carrier (dir.), Les Immatériaux (au Centre Georges Pompidou
en 1985), Étude de l’événement exposition et de son public, Paris, Expo Media, 1986, p. 37.
5. Concept theorised by the philosopher. See Jean-François Lyotard, La condition postmoderne :
rapport sur le savoir, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1979.
6. See the presse release for Les Immatériaux, 1985. [Online] https://www.centrepompidou.fr/
media/document/de/0d/de0d76bbe203394435216a975bea8618/normal.pdf [consulted July 18
2018].
7. After Lyotard, other philosophers and intellectuals became curators, often for one-off events.
They include Bernard Stiegler (Mémoires du futur, Paris : Bibliothèque publique d’information,
1987), Jacques Derrida (Mémoires d’aveugle, Paris : Musée du Louvre, 1990), Jean Starobinski
(Largesse, Paris : Musée du Louvre, 1994), Julia Kristeva (Vision capitales, Paris : Musée du Louvre,
1998), Paul Virilio (Ce qui arrive, Paris : Fondation Cartier, 2002), Bruno Latour (Iconoclash and
Making Things Public, Karlsruhe : ZKM, 2002, 2005) and Jean-Luc Nancy (Le Plaisir au dessin, Lyon :
Musée des Beaux-Arts, 2007). This information comes from Antony Hudek, "From Over- to Sub-
Exposure: The Anamnesis of Les Immatériaux", Tate Papers, 12 (Landmark Exhibitions Issue),
Autumn 2009. [Online] https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/12/from-
over-to-sub-exposure-the-anamnesis-of-les-immateriaux [consulted July 18 2018].
8. Exhibition press release, p. 4, 1985. [Online] https://www.centrepompidou.fr/media/
document/de/0d/de0d76bbe203394435216a975bea8618/normal.pdf [consulted July 18 2018].
9. Marta Hernandez, « Les Immatériaux », Appareil, no 10 (Lyotard et la surface d'inscription
numérique), 2012. [Online] http://journals.openedition.org/appareil/93 [consulted September 19
2018].
10. Lyotard preferred the term manifestation to the term exhibition to refer to Les Immatériaux.

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 Les Immatériaux: a tour of the exhibition with headphones 12

11. Exhibition press release, p. 4. [Online] https://www.centrepompidou.fr/media/document/

de/0d/de0d76bbe203394435216a975bea8618/normal.pdf, [consulted July 18 2018].
12. A quote from Jean-François Lyotard in Élie Théofilakis, "Les petits récits de chrysalide,
entretien Jean-François Lyotard - Élie Théofilakis", in Elie Théofilakis (dir.), Modernes et après :
Les Immatériaux, Paris, Autrement, 1985, p. 7.
13. Exhibition press release, p. 4. [Online] https://www.centrepompidou.fr/media/document/
de/0d/de0d76bbe203394435216a975bea8618/normal.pdf, [consulted July 18 2018].
14. A quote from Chantal Nöel in Philippe Merlant, "La règle du jeu : matérialiser Les
Immatériaux, entretien avec l’équipe du C.C.I.", in Élie Théofilakis (dir.), Modernes et après : Les
Immatériaux, Paris, Autrement, 1985, p. 19.
15. It is unfortunately impossible to listen to the soundtrack and its content. A copy exists in the
Jacques Doucet library and it will be digitalised soon.
16. See Jean-Louis Boissier, "La question des nouveaux médias numériques", in Bernadette
Dufrêne (dir.), Centre Pompidou, trente ans d’histoire : 1977-2007, Paris, Centre Georges
Pompidou, 2007, p. 380.
17. The texts on the soundtrack include writings by Hans Christian Andersen, Antonin Artaud,
Gaston Bachelard, Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot, Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Lewis
Carroll, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jean-Joseph Goux, Marcel Hénaff, Yves Klein, Henrich von Kleist,
Gilbert Lascault, Lao-Tseu, Jean-François Lyotard, Stéphane Mallarmé, Henri Michaux, Octavio
Paz, Marcel Proust, François Rabelais, Jacques Roubaud, Eugène Savitzkaya, Paul Virilio, Émile
Zola, accompanied by texts written specially for the exhibition by Dolorès Rogozinski.
18. On the subject of writing for the soundtrack, see Dolorès Lyotard (Rogozinski), “On the
Development of the Texts for the Les Immatériaux Soundtrack (Sur le développement du texte
pour la bande-son des Immatériaux)”, Working Paper n° 2, published by Andreas Broeckmann,
July 2019. [Online] http://les-immateriaux.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/LIR-WP2_Dolores-
Lyotard_Soundtrack_2019.pdf [Consulted July 2 2019].
19. The soundtrack and sound system were designed by the Centre Pompidou’s sound engineer,
Gérard Chiron.
20. A quote from Jean-François Lyotard speaking to François Dumont, « Le train fantôme du
Docteur Lyotard », Le Matin de Paris, Thursday March 28 1985, p. 24
21. Wall panel from the « Entrance hall » in Thierry Chaput et Jean-François Lyotard (dir.), Les
Immatériaux : Inventaire, Paris, Éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, 1985, no page numbers.
22. Expo-Media was a think-tank that was tasked with observing the changes in « exhibitions » in
all their forms since 1983.
23. Charles Perraton, "L’œuvre des petits récits autonomes", in Christian Carrier (dir.), Les
Immatériaux (au Centre Georges Pompidou en 1985), Étude de l’événement exposition et de son
public, Paris, Expo Media, 1986, p. 14.
24. Exhibition press release, p. 4. [Online] https://www.centrepompidou.fr/media/document/
de/0d/de0d76bbe203394435216a975bea8618/normal.pdf, [consulted July 18 2018].
25. A quote from Jean-François Lyotard in Élie Théofilakis, « Les petits récits de chrysalide,
entretien Jean-François Lyotard - Élie Théofilakis », in Élie Théofilakis (dir.), Modernes et après :
Les Immatériaux, Paris, Autrement, 1985, p. 7.
26. This lack of coincidence between sound and vision within the Immatériaux exhibition is,
according to Francesca Gallo, the continuation of Lyotard’s audio-visual experiments in the
seventies, in particular the Tribune sans tribun video made for Tribune libre for FR3 in 1978. See
Francesca Gallo, « Ce n’est pas une exposition, mais une œuvre d’art. L’exemple des Immatériaux
de Jean-François Lyotard », Appareil, no 10 (Lyotard et la surface d'inscription numérique), 2012.
[Online] https://journals.openedition.org/appareil/860 [consulted November 08 2018].
27. A quote from Jean-François Lyotard to François Dumont, « Le train fantôme du Docteur
Lyotard », Le Matin de Paris, Thursday, March 28 1985, p. 24.

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28. Nathalie Heinich, « Un événement culturel », in Christian Carrier (dir.), Les Immatériaux (au
Centre Georges Pompidou en 1985), Étude de l’événement exposition et de son public, Paris, Expo
Media, 1986, p. 37‑38.
29. A quote from Jean-François Lyotard in Élie Théofilakis, « Les petits récits de chrysalide,
entretien Jean-François Lyotard - Élie Théofilakis », in Élie Théofilakis (dir.), Modernes et après :
Les Immatériaux, Paris, Autrement, 1985, p. 7.
30. Inspired by Pour en finir encore (For to end yet again and other fizzles) by Samuel Beckett. An
extract from L’innommable (The Unnameable) was broadcast through the headphones.
31. Exhibition press release, p. 4. [Online] https://www.centrepompidou.fr/media/document/
de/0d/de0d76bbe203394435216a975bea8618/normal.pdf, [consulted July 18 2018].
32. Jean-François Lyotard, « Le partage des conséquences », in Les Immatériaux : Album, Paris,
Éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, 1985, p. 5.
33. See the Exhibition press release, p. 4. [Online] https://www.centrepompidou.fr/media/
document/de/0d/de0d76bbe203394435216a975bea8618/normal.pdf, [consulted July 18 2018].
34. But this freedom led to a lot of confusion for visitors: “many visitors left by the entrance,
which means thye hadn’t found the actual exit, and possibly had missed a number of sites.” See
what the guards had to say in Nathalie Heinich, « Un événement culturel », in Christian
Carrier (dir.), Les Immatériaux (au Centre Georges Pompidou en 1985), Étude de l’événement exposition et
de son public, Paris, Expo Media, 1986, p. 39.
35. Nathalie Heinich, « Un événement culturel », in Christian Carrier (dir.), Les Immatériaux (au
Centre Georges Pompidou en 1985), Étude de l’événement exposition et de son public, Paris, Expo
Media, 1986, p. 36.
36. Nathalie Heinich, « Un événement culturel », in Christian Carrier (dir.), Les Immatériaux (au
Centre Georges Pompidou en 1985), Étude de l’événement exposition et de son public, Paris, Expo Media,
1986, p. 39.
37. Jean Launay, « Les Immatériaux », Le Monde, March 28 1985. [Online] https://lemonde.fr/
archives/article/1985/03/28/les-immateriaux_2742266_1819218.html?
xtmc=les_immateriaux&xtcr=1 [consulted September 10 2018].
38. Nathalie Heinich, « Un événement culturel », in Christian Carrier (dir.), Les Immatériaux (au
Centre Georges Pompidou en 1985), Étude de l’événement exposition et de son public, Paris, Expo Media,
1986, p. 38.
39. Francesca Gallo, « Ce n’est pas une exposition, mais une œuvre d’art. L’exemple des
Immatériaux de Jean-François Lyotard », Appareil, no 10 (Lyotard et la surface d'inscription
numérique), 2012. [Online] https://journals.openedition.org/appareil/860 [consulted November
08 2018].
40. See the copy of a work document from 1984 (the second phase of reflecting on and designing
the exhibition) reproduced in Jean-François Lyotard and Thierry Chaput (dir.), Les Immatériaux :
Album, Paris, Éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, 1985, p. 19.
41. Philippe Délis, « Architecture : l’espace-temps autrement... », in Élie Théofilakis (dir.),
Modernes et après : Les Immatériaux, Paris, Autrement, 1985, p. 24.
42. At one point the idea of each visitor having a magnetic card to keep that would record their
movements was mooted until it was abandoned for technical and financial reasons. See Jean-
Louis Boissier, « La question des nouveaux médias numériques », in Bernadette Dufrêne (dir.),
Centre Pompidou, trente ans d’histoire : 1977-2007, Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, 2007, p. 377.
43. Jean-Louis Boissier, « La question des nouveaux médias numériques », in Bernadette
Dufrêne (dir.), Centre Pompidou, trente ans d’histoire : 1977-2007, Paris, Centre Georges
Pompidou, 2007, p. 380.
44. Élie Théofilakis, « Condition humaine, l’interface ou la transmodernité », in Élie
Théfilakis (dir.), Modernes et après : Les Immatériaux, Paris, Autrement, 1985, p. X.

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45. Exhibition press release, p. 4. [Online] https://www.centrepompidou.fr/media/document/

de/0d/de0d76bbe203394435216a975bea8618/normal.pdf, [consulted July 18 2018].
46. The opinion of a thirty-year-old teacher and academic in philosophy and epistemology visitor
to the exhibition, in Nathalie Heinich, « Un évènement culturel », in Christian Carrier (dir.), Les
Immatériaux (au Centre Georges Pompidou en 1985), Étude de l’événement exposition et de son
public, Paris, Expo Media, 1986, p. 105.
47. Nathalie Heinich, « Un évènement culturel », in Christian Carrier (dir.), Les Immatériaux (au
Centre Georges Pompidou en 1985), Étude de l’événement exposition et de son public, Paris, Expo Media,
1986, p. 117.
48. Jérôme Glicenstein, « « Les Immatériaux » : exposition, œuvre, événement », in Françoise
Coblence et Michel Enaudeau (dir.), Lyotard et les arts, Paris, Klincksieck, 2014, p. 205.
49. A quote from Thierry Chaput in Philippe Merlant, « La règle du jeu : matérialiser Les
Immatériaux, entretien avec l’équipe du C.C.I. », in Élie Théofilakis (dir.), Modernes et après : Les
Immatériaux, Paris, Autrement, 1985, p. 19.
50. While the exhibition may have wrong-footed many visitors who failed to grasp the issues at
stake, it left a lasting mark on everyone who saw it, and on exhibition history. It had various
follow-ons. For example, exhibitions curated by Thierry Chaput at the Cité des Sciences, in
particular the Image calculée in 1988, but also the establishment of the Revue virtuelle from 1992 to
1996 at the Centre Pompidou. It also influenced numerous artists like Dominique Gonzalez-
Foerster, Philippe Parreno and Loris Gréaud in the design of their own exhibitions. A more in-
depth study of the influence of the Immatériaux exhibition in the field of contemporary art still
needs to be carried out.

ABSTRACTS
This article focuses on the exhibition Les Immatériaux curated by the philosopher Jean-François
Lyotard and Thierry Chaput at the Centre Pompidou in 1985, and more particularly on its
soundtrack. The exhibition was devised around the question of “postmodernity”, and aimed to
reflect an era where the question of intangibility was becoming more and more present with the
development of new technologies. Visitors were given wireless headphones to wear as they
wandered around the exhibit, so that they could listen to a specially recorded soundtrack.
However, the soundtrack, which broadcast texts of writers and philosophers but also recorded
sounds – music and various noises – that had been chosen to resonate with the developed themes
in the exhibition, led to much confusion among visitors. In this article, we will examine the initial
intentions of the exhibition team concerning the soundtrack and its broadcasting system by
comparing them with the visitors’ experience.

INDEX
Keywords: Les Immatériaux, Jean-François Lyotard, Thierry Chaput, exhibition, soundtrack,
headphones, postmodernity, new technologies

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AUTHORS
MARIE VICET
In 2017, Marie Vicet completed a Ph.D. in contemporary art history at University Paris Nanterre
on the links between contemporary visual artists and the music video since the early 1980s. Her
current research focuses on the exhibition Les Immatériaux which took place in 1985 at the Centre
Georges Pompidou and was curated by Jean-François Lyotard and Thierry Chaput, concentrating
on the place of new media in the event. Along with Andreas Broeckmann, she recently published
a chronology of the exhibition (see http://les-immateriaux.net/working-papers/). For the year
2019-2020, she is a postdoctoral fellow at the German Centre for Art History - DFK Paris as part of
the “Arts and New Media (XX-XXI Century)” annual themed programme.

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