Patti Smith & Soundwalk Collective

Patti Smith has been living with death for a long time. With her beloved husband, guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, who passed away in 1994. But perhaps since long before, with the writers and especially the poets in her life. During her appearance on Augustin Trapenard’s 21 centimètres program,  she cherished the final resting places of the writers Beauvoir and Baudelaire, the photographers Susan Sontag and Man Ray, thanking him at the Montparnasse cemetery. In the experience presented at the Centre Pompidou, she pays homage to three French poets who guided her: Arthur Rimbaud, Antonin Artaud, and René Daumal. 

She shares her love for them with sound artist Stephan Crasneanscki, born in Odessa, Ukraine, and based in New York where he founded the experimental music collective Soundwalk Collective. Together, they offer us “Evidence”, a totally immersive experience. Patti Smith is a multi-faceted artist, worthy of the Renaissance: a musician with unforgettable melodies like “Because the night” or “People have the power”, writer of award-winning books like “M Train” or “Year of the Monkey”, poet, photographer, visual artist… Stephan Crasneanscki himself is a composer, photographer, and director. 

After traversing the words of Rimbaud, Artaud, and Daumal again and again, they decided to get even closer to their consciousness by physically following in their footsteps. They repeated the journeys of the poets to see what they saw, hear what they heard, smell what they smelled: in the Sierra Tarahumara in northern Mexico for Antonin Artaud, in the mountains of Abyssinia in Ethiopia for Arthur Rimbaud, and at the top of the Himalayas in India for René Daumal. 

From these trips, they brought back fragments: videos, photographs, stones, sketches, all kinds of objects, and even plants. And above all, sounds, recordings of nature, rituals, songs… Between 2019 and 2021 they created Perfect Vision - a triptych of albums inspired by the travels of poets.

Now, they are transforming these relics into an immersive experience specially designed for Beaubourg. This is experienced with headphones that pick up different sounds according to our movements. The 200m2 of the exhibition - populated with manufactured & organic objects, photographs of poets, and sketches made by Smith and Crasneanscki - seems much larger. We could stay there for hours, sitting on the benches, letting ourselves be carried away because we will never relive the same experience twice. Each step leads us to a new sound. 

The wind, the rain, the thrashing rocks, and the drums are enchanting. They mingle with the readings of poems whispered by the warm voice of Patti Smith or other actors such as the Mexican Gabriel Garcia Bernal, the British Charlotte Rampling, or the French Melvil Poupaud. Rimbaud’s words “Par les soirs bleus d’été, j’irai dans les sentiers …” echo the azure of the stained glass windows projected on the walls. Like the wandering poet, we are sometimes amazed by the discovery of a sound - stopped in our tracks, we no longer dare to move for fear of losing it. 

We don’t know if the enchanting songs we hear are those of the Tarahumara natives encountered by Artaud, or those of a Zikri ritual in Ethiopia. But that doesn’t matter because the artists fantasize about a world without borders. With this absence, they offer us a Babelesque refuge. They tell us that it is certainly more difficult for humans to understand each other since God confused the languages, but that it is not impossible. And what better place than the Centre Pompidou where dozens and dozens of nationalities meet every day. 

While Europe is tempted to close in on itself, “Evidence” tells us the story of three French people who found themselves and became accomplished when they left. With headphones on, the experience is introspective of course, but we vibrate to the same sounds, the same melodies as our neighbors for a few moments, without speaking the same language. “Having this awareness to be capable of reaching towards something external, to be transported somewhere else, is I think one of the most beautiful things about being alive - this is what we communicate with. Pure energy.” said Patti Smith to Stephan Crasneanscki in a recorded discussion in 2018. Like Baudelaire, they offer us an “invitation to travel” to the heart of Paris. 

Exhibition included in the Permanent Collection but headphone reservation is mandatory. Until March 6, 2023. Museum, Level 4, Gallery 0, Prospective space.

Performance “In evidence: Antonin Artaud” by Patti Smith & Stephan Crasneanscki on March 04, 2023, in the Great Hall, level -1.

Signing of the exhibition catalog by Patti Smith and Stephan Crasneanscki, March 5 at 6 p.m. at the Center Pompidou bookstore.