Unstable Media in the 21st Century

This exhibition features some of the most radical voices in the past three decades, through some 40 landmark works from Centre Pompidou’s New Media Collection. The uncertain future of emerging technologies has always posed a challenge to the criteria of continuity and longevity expected of a museum collection. And yet, these technologies have shaped our sensory memory, becoming ingrained in each of us over time, like a second skin. Their transience is matched only by the lasting impact they have on perception, imagination and the constant reworking of knowledge.

“Unstable Media in the 21st Century” invites visitors to discover recent evolutions in this field of artistic creation through a wide range of forms, acts and situations. The exhibition explores how artists appropriate the media of their time and constantly reinvent the narratives of image and sound, embracing their nonlinear paths through computer programming and network traffic. 

The main research into these practices today is addressed in eight chapters: the representation of time and the exploration of digital material; the dilution of narrative and the mise en abyme of the archive; the confrontation with colonial history and the potential of an artwork as a site of doubt and utterance; and the examination of the body as image and of the image as body. Large-scale installations converse with miniatures, movement is reflected in stillness; organic life and simulated life infuse into one another, borrowing each other’s appearance. The exhibition’s layout suggests an open-ended journey, full of twists and turns, loops and shifting perspectives, capable of telling a story yet to be written.