The 14th Biennale de Lyon will be held from 20 September 2017 to 7 January 2018 at La Sucrière and macLYON – but also in the heart of the city, Place Antonin Poncet. Buckminster Fuller’s iconic artwork, “Radome” (1957), from the Centre Pompidou’s collections, presents a piece of geodesic architecture that will house “clinamen v2”, an audio artwork by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot: a one-off dialogue between works by two leading artists that will serve up
a unique experience.
This third venue – free, outdoors and deeply poetic – will offer itself to passers-by from 20 September until 5 November 2017.
Richard Buckminster Fuller
Born in 1895 in Milton (United States), died in 1983 Engineer, artist, architect and visionary inventor, Richard Buckminster Fuller was the author of many innovations – both theoretical and technical. In the 1950’s, he popularized the geodesic dome, a spherical structure that allows a balanced distribution of the structural stress and is easy to build. In the same anticipatory
vein, he designed new, aerodynamic modes of transport as well as cheap and ecologically sound designs for individual dwellings that are still valid today. His ambitious, humanistic perspective, which combined design, poetry, science and philosophy, proved to be a
major influence in the establishment of alternative communities.
Buckminster Fuller’s Radome, from the collections of the Centre Pompidou is a perfect example of his desire to combine purity of form with use by the community at large.
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot
Born in 1961 in Nice (France), lives and works in Sète (France) Having trained as a visual artist and musician, Céleste Boursier- Mougenot redefines the modalities of how a sound work can be transmitted and received. He finds musical potential in a highly diverse range of situations and objects, and from them he generates what he describes as living sound forms. Céleste Boursier- Mougenot’s clinamen v2 takes the form of a blue swimming pool, with white china bowls clinking and moving about on its surface and creating a visual and auditory landscape that is both soothing and immersive. The vessels, which float against one another in a circular pool influenced by a slight current, produce a melody similar to that generated by Tibetan bowls.
About the Biennale de Lyon
Artistic director Thierry Raspail has invited Emma Lavigne, director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, to curate the international exhibition of the 14th Biennale de Lyon. This is the second edition of the trilogy around the word “modern”, running from 20 September 2017 to 7 January 2018 at the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art (macLYON) and La Sucrière. The Biennale de Lyon has attracted more than 220,000 visitors on average to its most recent editions; and in 2003 and 2007 added two further platforms, Résonance and Veduta.