Immersed in the “Light Basins” in Bordeaux

• Two major exhibitions dedicated to the painters Gustav Klimt and Paul Klee are on the program for the opening.
• Digital art, a very complex process for animating works of art, makes it possible to reach a younger audience, says the operator of the Culturespaces site.
• The operator targets 350,000 to 400,000 visitors per year for this site, which promises to become an emblematic cultural place in the region.

Cut off in full swing by the coronavirus crisis, the Bassins de Lumières project which was to open last April within the confines of the Bordeaux submarine base, will finally be inaugurated on June 10. 20 Minutes went this Thursday to the screening of two major digital exhibitions, dedicated to the painters Gustav Klimt and Paul Klee, which will be broadcast for this opening. Here is everything you need to know about this “pharaonic” project. "

What is digital art?

"We are talking about digital art, because we use works that we have digitized, and that we use digital processes to animate them, put them to music and space", explains Augustin de Cointet, director of the Bassins de Lights for the company Culturespaces.

Some 98 video projectors spread across the entire submarine base project the works of art during the exhibition. - Mickaël Bosredon / 20 Minutes

“It's not just animation on a canvas, we don't just move characters, there is a scenographer who worked on this project, insists the director. It takes about a year to make an exhibition like this, and on the site we installed 98 video projectors, around fifty speakers, all connected by 120 km of optical fiber and 25 media servers that coordinate the image, which means that with the naked eye you cannot know where one image stops or where the next begins. That's the magic of it, and that's what gives this principle of immersion. We are on something very sensory. "

How are the two exhibitions on Gustav Klimt and Paul Klee presented?

For the opening of the Light Basins, the company Culturespaces has chosen to broadcast two major exhibitions:  Gustav Klimt, gold and colors , and Paul Klee, painting music . "These two exhibitions combine the history of art with music, the aim being to introduce as many people as possible to a slightly different approach to art history thanks to digital means," explains Augustin de Cointet.

Basins of Lights at #Bordeaux: works by Klimt and Paul Klee will be projected in music on the walls of the underwater base pic.twitter.com/3H83xXDHqf

The exhibition on Klimt takes us on almost 100 years of Viennese painting, and offers an original look at Klimt through the staging of his portraits, landscapes and nudes. The walls of the pools of light are thus adorned with the colors and gilding that revolutionized Viennese painting at the end of the 19th century. “Klimt had this ability to play on matter by adding gold, enamels in his compositions, which go very well with the grainy walls of the underwater base. We have matter for matter and it works very well ”analyzes Augustin de Cointet.

The second exhibition, Paul Klee, painting music , is particularly musical. “Klee had a crazy love for Mozart, and we wanted to resume this dialogue between Mozart and Klee, which is why the exhibition is very dynamically accompanied by The Magic Flute . "

The second major exhibition of the Bassins de Lumières at the Bordeaux submarine base is dedicated to the painter Paul Klee. - Mickaël Bosredon / 20 Minutes

Two other contemporary art exhibitions complete this program, installed in a specific location, Le Cube.

Who is Culturespaces?

This operator of the art world, who will therefore operate part of the submarine base through a delegation of public service (DSP) passed with the town hall, has existed for thirty years. "At the outset, our mission was to advise museums and historic monuments to enhance the visit routes," explains Augustin de Cointet. Then we quickly became a cultural operator, to manage sites and monuments, such as the Jacquemart-André museum in Paris, the Baux-de-Provence castle, the Nîmes arenas… We then noticed that there is an audience that not going to see the classic exhibitions, a younger audience, and that had to be attracted. "

Exhibition Paul Klee, Painting the music, from June 10 at the Bassins de Lumieres at the submarine base of #Bordeaux pic.twitter.com/I7kgL2DvcG

This is how, from 2012, “we opened the Carrières de Lumières in Baux-de-Provence, which are stone quarries in which we are planning digital exhibitions. It was a huge success, and we wanted to do that in Paris, where we opened the Atelier des Lumières in 2018, which also met with huge success, and then we turned to Bordeaux. What attracted us here is mainly the place which is extraordinary. "

When did the Bassins de Lumières project go back?

The reflection started in 2014, recalls Fabien Robert, deputy mayor in charge of culture. "Not that the base was abandoned, since it receives between 100,000 and 130,000 visitors per year with exhibitions around images and digital art, but it was short of breath, and we wanted to use it differently. We launched a call for projects to have a place dedicated to digital projection, to the moving image. The result is breathtaking, magical. I am convinced that it will become one of the emblematic cultural places of our city and even of our region. "

"We really started the project in September 2018, but the works only started in June 2019," adds Augustin de Cointet. Even though this is a huge piece of machinery and a pharaonic project, we have tried to preserve the identity of the submarine base [built by the Germans at the start of the Second World War to provide repairs and maintenance of submarines] and to make the minimum of modifications. "

What are the objectives for frequenting the site?

"We have set a target of frequentation around 350,000-400,000 visitors per year," announces Augustin de Cointet. This year will be a little special, since we will open later, and our tonnage of 865 people is reduced to 385 people, the time of the health crisis. We reopened reservations on May 25, and sales are off to a good start, with 3,500 tickets sold since the start of the week. "

Basins of Lights, opening June 10. Full price: € 13.50, reduced price: € 11, youth price: € 9.

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