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Film and New media

The Centre Pompidou has one of the very first collections in the world dedicated to film, video, sound and digital media.

The collection was started in 1976, at the same time that the Musée national d'art moderne was transferred to the building designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. Its audacious aim was to promote the idea of heritage linked to these emerging, ephemeral, experimental media, and to observe the rapid changes at work within our society. 

Film

The Centre Pompidou’s film collection includes films by experimental directors, art films, and installations by visual artists. In 1976, Pontus Hulten, the first director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou, commissioned a programme entitled "A history of the cinema" from Peter Kubelka, a key proponent of the experimental school, for which the museum bought the first hundred films making up the core of the collection.

 

The collection is unique in the world and comprises 1,400 works - most of which are on film - by visual artists and film directors from a wide range of geographic and cultural backgrounds. From the avant-garde of the 1920s with Walter Ruttmann, Hans Richter, Fernand Léger or Man Ray, to the expanded cinema of the 1960s with Robert Whitman, Anthony McCall and Paul Sharits and contemporary art cinema (Steve McQueen, Mark Lewis, Tacita Dean), the collection covers over a century of experimental and artistic cinematographic practices which have developed on the periphery of industrial cinema.  

Each year, the Centre Pompidou acquires new works, both historic and contemporary, which it preserves in their original format. One of its tasks is to conduct constantly updated digitisation campaigns in order to safeguard our film heritage. Another is to distribute these films, which it does through all the means provided by today's digital technology. 

 

Explore full film collection


New media

The "new media" collection gathers over 2,600 works dating from 1963 to the present day: installations, videos, sound, digital films and interactive digital media

 

From their very beginnings, these "new media" came as a critical response to the mass media. They have also been the preferred choice for conserving the memory of actions, performances, concerts and happenings. From the 1990s, “exposed cinema” and the emergence of the Internet brought new formats to the collection, while also opening it up to all the continents.

 

Amongst the treasures in the historical collection, there are important ensembles and unique pieces (often produced by the Centre Pompidou), pioneering video, sound poetry and experimental music: Vito Acconci, Valie Export, John Giorno, Jean-Luc Godard, Dan Graham, Mona Hatoum, Mike Kelley, Chris Marker, Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Eliane Radigue, Anthony Ramos, Pipilotti Rist, Bill Viola, Nil Yalter and others.

 

More recent works offer a broad perspective on current artistic practices linked to the moving image, sound installations and digital experiments, such as major works by the following artists: Lawrence Abu-Hamdan, Francis Alÿs, Chen Chieh-Jen, Cao Fei, Claude Closky, Harun Farocki, Omer Fast, Dora Garcia, Marguerite Humeau, Pierre Huyghe, Ryoji Ikeda, Isaac Julien, Nalini Malani, Christian Marclay, Deimantas Narkevicius, The Propeller Group, Ugo Rondinone, Sineb Sedira, Hito Steyerl, Fiona Tan, Marie Voignier.

 

Explore full New media collection


In the Museum

Access to works:

The works can be consulted: 

*Excluding videos, CD-ROMs and sound works, which require special installations, as well as very recent acquisitions and videos currently being restored.


Programme:

Thanks to a regularly renewed themed programme, the space for "Collections of film, video, sound and digital works" on level 4 of the museum also highlights a selection of works and documents from the museum collection. Recent acquisitions, critical interpretations and current events invite us to renew our perception of the analog and digital cultures of image and sound.

 Now 

Fred Forest and Information Technology
Archives of Video and Digital Projects

24 January – 22 July 2024

Level 4, "Espace des collections film, vidéo, son et œuvres numériques"

 

Fred Forest, a pioneer of video and one of the very first artists in France to embrace it, has dedicated his career to exploring mass media technologies. A professor of information science and communication, with a PhD from the Sorbonne, he is one of the founders of the Collectif d’Art Sociologique (Sociological Art Collective) and the Esthétique de la communication (Aesthetics of communication). While developing his initial knowledge of networks working as an inspector of post and telecommunications, he used video as early as 1967, extending his practice also to press, radio, telematic networks, net art, virtual reality and NFTs.

With deliberately provocative actions conducted before a large audience, his work questions how these technologies transform our social and media environment. His participative experiments, such as the one presented in this exhibition La Banque du pied (The Foot Bank) (2023), overturn the relationship between media and spectators, urging the latter to see themselves not as passive receivers of information but as players of their own design. Fred Forest thus explores the artistic and emancipatory potential of communication technologies and the limits of the power relations they establish with individuals.

 

Based on many actions in France and internationally, this exhibition presents an ensemble of archives of this work which, since the 1960s, has systematically accompanied the evolution of new media.

    • Sit down and remove your shoe from your right foot.
    • Place your foot on a sheet of paper and draw the outline of its imprint.
    • Add your first name or your nickname, your country and town of origin in capitals. If you wish, you can also write the name of the person you believe to be the most important in the history of mankind inside the foot (it could be a writer, a singer or a soccer player), without extending outside the footprint.
      You can also do the same at home, using your favourite technique. Pen, watercolour, wash, paint, photography, digital practices, etc. All techniques are accepted.
    • Once your creation is finished, take a photo of it and send it:
    • Your photo will be in the exhibition from the 24 January 2024 and on the web at this address: https://flockler.embed.codes/j59zej

     Past events 

    « Les Immatériaux » (1985)
    A look back at a postmodern event at the Centre Pompidou

    5 July 2023 – 22 January 2024

     

    Detailed presentation


    Où est-ce qu’on se mai ?
    Activist video from the 1970s in France

    24 June 2022 – 2 January 2023

     

    Detailed presentation (in French)


    Who You Staring At?
    Visual culture of the no wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s

    1st February – 1st May 2023

     

    The new artistic scene no wave appeared in New York's Lower Manhattan in 1978.
    A visceral reaction to the dominant musical and artistic trends, a confrontational attitude and a determination to deconstruct the conventional gaze, presented here in an ensemble of multidisciplinary practices where dance, opera, music and the visual arts intersect.

     

    Detailed presentation, video and sound excerpts