Catalogue des Arts et Métiers

One of Paris’s most exciting places is sited in the Rue Réaumur 60. The Musée des Arts et Métiers is not only a harbourage to many technical exhibits and industrial products – it is also the stage in Eco’s grand novel "Il pendolo di Foucault". A venue full of stories and a panopticon of ideas that once became manifest. My work revisits the yellowed tales that might be borne in all those objects, cars, tins, rack-wheels, periscopes and displays them in a ‘sonic catalogue’. In three parts that are each named after a raw material, we hear about the colourful world of metals – “bunte Welt der Metalle”, about the sound of silk – “Klang nach Seide” and about the imperial grace of marble. Meanwhile, hammering rhythms are advancing – naturalistically contouring monotonic manufacturing processes. Yet, they seem to keep an ironising distance to the delicate and occasionally Mannerist passages at the same moment. Both idylls are delusions and turn out to be idealised illustrations. One could easily get bedazzled by the goldsmithery cast in the sounds of the celesta and sucked into the swirls of the marching tuttis. On that note everything is bound to end in smoke. An ignis fatuus evaporating.