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In the Still of the Museum: Jean-Luc Godard's Sixty-Year Voyage
*Jehanne-Marie Gavarini *
/University of Massachusetts, Lowell
and Brandeis University /
gavarini@brandeis.edu
(c) 2006 Jehanne-Marie Gavarini.
All rights reserved.
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Review of:
Voyage(s) en Utopie, Jean-Luc Godard 1946-2006, In Search of Lost
Theorem. Paris: Pompidou Center, 11 May-14 Aug 2006.
1. Voyage(s) en Utopie, Jean-Luc Godard 1946-2006, In Search of Lost
Theorem was presented at the Pompidou Center in Paris from May 11
to August 14, 2006. With this installation, Godard pushes the
cinematic envelope a step beyond his legendary experimental
aesthetic. Rather than offer a retrospective or traditional
cinematographic exhibition, Voyage(s) en Utopie stands at the
intersection between cinema and the visual arts. Faithful to
Godard's cinematic style, his museum piece does not pre-digest the
filmmaker's thoughts for his audience. Juxtaposed signs and
symbols produce unexpected associations; combined, they form a
gigantic puzzle. The viewer is expected to gather and decode a
plethora of information in order to create an individualized
mental montage. The exhibition uses strategies such as
appropriation of imagery, found text, and film that have been
championed by Godard since his early films. Although contemporary
visual art is little quoted in Godard's films, Voyage(s) en Utopie
confirms that a two-way dialogue exists between Godard and other
contemporary art. The poetry, revolutionary aesthetics, and
political engagement of Godard's films inspired numerous art
practitioners. His influence on several generations of filmmakers,
visual artists, and video artists is well documented.
Correspondingly, Godard is clearly aware of developments in visual
arts where strategies of appropriation are strongly rooted. From
the cubists to Marcel Duchamp and Sherrie Levine, visual artists
have endlessly quoted one another. Additionally, many visual
artists such as Douglas Gordon or Matthias Müller have
appropriated from cinema.[1 <#foot1>] While the form of Voyage(s)
en Utopie is not necessarily groundbreaking, the multiple meanings
and associations found in this exhibition set Godard apart from
present-day artists who use similar strategies only to reduce
their comment on contemporary culture to one-liners.
2. Voyage(s) en Utopie was originally planned as a different show
titled Collage(s) de France, archéologie du cinema, d'après JLG.[2
<#foot2>] The former director of the Cinémathèque Française,
Dominique Païni, who was the curator of Collage(s), explains that
in the original show, space was meant to be "used to describe a
temporal process, that of thought itself." Païni adds:
In fact the visitor was invited to experience the time of a
film's conception in a new way: the time of "materialization"
(to use JLG's words), the time that passes between the phases
of imagining and making, before arriving at the condensed time
of the finished work, which is then painfully separated from
its maker and swallowed up into the tomb of distribution and
communication.
3. Voyage(s) en Utopie differs from Collage(s) de France. Here space
is used not merely to provide the viewers with the experience of
the duration of a film's conception, but more as a mean to travel
in time, give a material form to memory, and reify the history of
cinema and culture. Godard's shift from motion pictures to the
presence and power of still objects in a museum setting appears to
conjure up a desire to stop the forward motion of cinema. The
filmmaker's object-based installation is grounded in the material
world, but like all installations it will cease to exist at the
end of the show. A still frame in the history of motion pictures,
Voyage(s) en Utopie provides a short pause in the filmmaker's
prolific sixty-year journey.
4. Despite having abandoned the original project, Godard refers to
Collage(s) de France throughout Voyage(s) en Utopie. From the
moment viewers enter the exhibition space, they are presented with
the history and archeological strata of Voyage(s) en Utopie. On
the wall immediately behind the entrance turnstile Godard places
an initial placard indicating that the Pompidou Center decided to
cancel the exhibition because of artistic difficulties. Two other
reasons (financial and technical difficulties) are also mentioned
but crossed out by Godard's hand along with a photo of one of the
scale models for the original show. The same placard is seen in
several other spots within the exhibition. Although no further
explanation is provided, the viewers get a sense of the built up
tensions and difficult relationships that can develop between
artists, curators, and institutions. The crossed out text
undoubtedly signifies Godard's disagreement with the Pompidou
Center's official version of why Collage(s) was abandoned. By
exposing the history and baggage behind the show, this rebellious
and ever-questioning artist refuses to abide by the rules. When he
reveals what took place behind the scene, Godard goes against the
expected sanitized façade usually presented to museum audiences.
5. Voyage(s) consists of three rooms, but viewers are not told what
order they should follow while visiting the exhibition. Their
intuition alone guides them through the show. The first room,
Salle -2: Avant Hier ("Room -2: The Day Before Yesterday") is
dedicated to Collage(s) de France. Here Godard shows the remains
of the first project: models and models of models for nine
separate rooms along with some full-scale objects intended to be
in the original show. Although frequently shown in architecture
exhibitions, models in the context of an art installation are more
of a surprise. This is particularly true because these models are
roughly finished and are not presented in a glass case, as they
would be in traditional displays. Their integration within the
installation introduces the idea of a story. But Godard's
narratives are typically nonlinear and their decoding requires
nondiegetic information. The presence of the models, and in
particular the use of several scales of models, creates a /mise en
abîme/ that elicits questions about the nature of the objects
presented; viewers may wonder whether they are actually looking at
Collage(s) or Voyage(s). Furthermore, are the models actual art
objects or simple devices documenting the history of the
exhibition? This approach transforms the status of the abandoned
project from rough draft to work of art. It creates confusion
between originals and their copies, art objects and their
representation; and destabilizes the nature of conventional
exhibitions.
Figure 1
*Figure 1: View of the exhibition "Voyage(s) en utopie,
Jean-Luc Godard 1946-2006,
à la recherche d'un théorème perdu."*
(c) Jean-Claude Planchet, Centre Pompidou 2006
6. The difficulties Godard encountered with the abandoned project are
visually and perceptually emphasized by the unstable environment
he creates in this room. The models are stacked, sometimes
precariously. Remnants of floorboards and metal fences scattered
on the ground produce uneven floor covering on which the viewers
are walking. Contrasting with the extraordinary aesthetic
character of recent films like Notre Musique (2004), this show
aligns itself with the anti-aesthetic of contemporary visual
art.[3 <#foot3>] It derives from the unfinished look that prevails
in many contemporary art installations. In particular, Godard
borrows from Christian Boltanski's signature style by making
visible large black webs of electrical cables on the gallery's
white walls.[4 <#foot4>] Voyage(s) also resembles the visual and
conceptual wreckage of Ilya Kabakov's L'Homme qui s'est envolé
dans l'espace, (The Man Who Flew into Space) an installation
presented at the Pompidou Center in the late nineteen eighties. In
this installation, Kabakov's fictional character supposedly flew
through the ceiling of his apartment leaving behind a wrecked
environment in which sits the contraption he built to escape
communism and his reality. Similarly, in Voyage(s) trash and
debris are strewn around the floor. Unfinished and partially
painted walls reveal the guts of the show: DVD players and other
electronic devices, layers of sheetrock, and tangles of wires and
cables. Enclosed behind a fence, the objects planned for
Collage(s) are not accessible to viewers. To emphasize the idea of
prohibition further, Godard uses a clip from The Old Place (1999),
a film commissioned by the New York Museum of Modern Art that he
co-directed with Anne-Marie Miéville.[5 <#foot5>] This clip
features the opening shot from Citizen Kane (1941). Welles's
notorious "No Trespassing" sign is immediately followed by a clip
of another sign also shot through a metal fence: "/Défense
d'entrer, propriété de l'...tat/" ("No Trespassing, State
Property"). This juxtaposition of signs suggests the ban of
Collage(s) de France by the Pompidou Center, a state-funded
institution.
7. Beyond this jab at the hosting museum, Room -2 looks at cinema as
metaphor. In one of the models, a short text tells the story of a
woman who finds drawings she created as a little girl; fifty years
later she realizes that the drawings match a series of quotes she
has gathered throughout her life. The story concludes that such a
moment corresponds with the end of the battle between the image
and the spirit of the text.[6 <#foot6>] To give form to the story,
Godard creates an object that resembles a Mutoscope, one of the
flip-card devices that preceded the film projector. A full-scale
replica sits behind the metal fence along with other objects
intended to be in Collage(s). This visual element creates free
association between memory and the Mutoscope, the mechanisms of
the psyche and cinema. Room -2 itself stands for Collage(s); it
represents what has been repressed, the unconscious of Voyage(s).
Cinema's history is embedded in our psyche; it performs the role
of social unconscious.
8. Further examining the social unconscious, responsibilities, and
guilt, another model addresses the European powers' lack of
involvement in the War in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. After
For Ever Mozart and Notre Musique, this model denounces
imperialist ideology and ethnic cleansing. Wood fences that bring
to mind imagery from old military forts cut through the space. An
American flag overlaid with an eagle is juxtaposed with a
sepia-toned photograph of a Native American. Other flags from the
European Union hang on a metal fence whose stakes are driven into
images of Bosnia. A miniature drive-in theater projects a clip
from Je vous salue Sarajevo (1993) on an iPod. This two-minute
film was conceived as a video-letter from Godard to the
inhabitants of Sarajevo. It denounces war, military power, and the
European Union in a poetic and dramatic manner. Godard, who has
dedicated a large part of his oeuvre to the examination of the
politics of war and the denunciation of Nazism, condemns the
passivity of viewers who watched the horrific war in Bosnia on
screens designed for entertainment. The size of the projection
signifies the minimal importance of the horrors of the war in the
former Republic of Yugoslavia. Furthermore, it comments on the
shrinking size of screens. With the digital revolution, the number
of screens is growing at an exponential rate, but their
increasingly smaller sizes diminish the impact of the images.
Figure 1
Figure 1
*Figures 2 & 3: Views of the exhibition "Voyage(s) en utopie,
Jean-Luc Godard 1946-2006,
à la recherche d'un théorème perdu."*
(c) Jean-Claude Planchet, Centre Pompidou 2006
9. Salle -2: Avant Hier connects with Salle 3: Hier ("Room 3:
Yesterday") via a tunnel with an electric train traveling back and
forth. In Salle -2, the words "/Avant Hier,/" instead of being
hyphenated as they are in standard French, are separated by a
large space.[7 <#foot7>] This creates a visual division between
these words and Godard's subtitle for the room: Avoir ...té.
"/Avant/" ("before") is stacked with "/Avoir/" ("to have"), and
"/Hier/" ("yesterday") with "/...té/" ("summer"). Thus, the words
can be read as groups or as separate entities, creating several
possible interpretations for this room's title. Typical of
Godard's clever and playful language manipulations, this title's
basic interpretation, "The Day Before Yesterday" or "To Have
Been," is complicated by the separation and stacking of the words.
Viewers can also understand this title as bringing together the
concepts of "before" with "having" and "yesterday" with "summer"
and with "the past." In the next room, the visual division is even
more obvious. A window cuts through the word /Hier/, separating it
into two sets of letters, "/Hi/" and "/Er/," neither of which
constitutes a word in French. Recalling Godard's numerous
denunciations of totalitarian regimes and Nazism in particular,
this author stood in front of the room's title wondering if she
was the only viewer who felt tempted to fill in the gap to create
the word Hitler. The subtitle /Avoir/ is also divided into two
words, "/A/" and "/voir,/" by the same window.[8 <#foot8>]
"Yesterday" equals "to have," but viewers also understand that
something that took place yesterday needs to be seen; most likely,
Godard is referring to twentieth-century cinema. In this room, he
introduces the filmmakers who have shaped his vision: for
instance, Fritz Lang, whom he quoted in his elaborate Histoire(s)
du cinéma, and, maybe more importantly, who plays the film
director in Contempt (1963) while Godard holds the role of his
assistant. The use of a clip from Orson Welles's self-produced and
unfinished epic Don Quixote is another reference to the
impossibility of Collage(s). Godard uses many more clips from
films, such as Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954), that he has
quoted repeatedly in his own works. Excerpts by filmmakers who
have been Godard's role models, his friends, or collaborators such
as Roberto Rossellini, Jean Renoir, Robert Bresson, Jean Cocteau,
Jean-Pierre Melville, and Jacques Becker among others attest to
the extraordinary intellectual web formed by the Nouvelle Vague.
Godard also includes sixteen clips and short films of his own work
and that of Anne-Marie Miéville. These range from classical Godard
like Weekend (1967), a provocative caricature of the life of the
French middle class in the sixties, to Vrai Faux Passeport (2006),
a film created for this exhibition that comments on the rating by
critics of television and cinema. Godard, who appears increasingly
concerned with historical memory and with the need for preserving
his own oeuvre, lures his viewers with these teaser-clips. Their
voyage might expand beyond the walls of the Pompidou Center and be
prolonged by a trip to the /cinemathèque/, the movie theater, or
the video store to explore further the dialogue he sets up between
these fragments of films.
Figure 4
*Figure 4: View of the exhibition "Voyage(s) en utopie,
Jean-Luc Godard 1946-2006,
à la recherche d'un théorème perdu."*
(c) Jean-Claude Planchet, Centre Pompidou 2006
10. In Salle 1, Aujourd'hui, Godard recreates a contemporary home,
including bedroom, kitchen, living room, and office. This room
represents or documents life in today's world. This is perhaps the
most explicit or literal part of the exhibition. People walking on
Beaubourg Street, which is on the east side of the Pompidou
Center, appear included in the installation. Viewed through the
window, they rush pass Godard's sign "/Aujourd'hui: Etre/"
("Yesterday: To Be") and enter his scenography; their mere
presence under Godard's placard makes them live material in this
contemporary art installation. They are transformed into
philosophical beings who /exist/ within today's world. On the west
side of the large glass-enclosed space, the slightly opaque and
partially open blinds reveal a group of homeless people living in
tents and forming a tidy camp.[9 <#foot9>] Although not officially
part of the exhibition, they are unofficially included in the
show. Their presence is an uncomfortable reminder of the
inequalities dividing museum audiences from street people.
Figure 1
Figure 1
*Figure 5 & 6: Views of the exhibition "Voyage(s) en utopie,
Jean-Luc Godard 1946-2006,
à la recherche d'un théorème perdu."*
(c) Jean-Claude Planchet, Centre Pompidou 2006
11. Like an open loft space, this imaginary home is subdivided into
several living areas. Directly across the entrance to the room,
two gigantic screens set horizontally on a tabletop broadcast
French TV. In an interview with Christophe Kantcheff, Godard
explains that the screens are presented horizontally because they
are called flat screens. He adds that their flatness is a metaphor
for the lack of depth of this apartment.[10 <#foot10>] Entering
the room, Godard's viewers will probably agree that
there is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an
empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself
or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another
planet is communicating with you. Suddenly the TV reveals
itself for what it really is: a video of another world,
ultimately addressed to no one at all, delivering its images
indifferently, indifferent to its own messages (you can easily
imagine it still functioning after humanity has disappeared).
(Baudrillard 50)
12. A typewriter, precariously resting behind the television screens,
appears to have been violently hacked to pieces. Its bare parts
and missing keys are a commentary on the rapid changes in
technologies. With this object, Godard creates a nostalgic image
for a time gone by, the time of the mechanical era that preceded
the violence and speed of the digital revolution. The ubiquitous
presence of new media in this contemporary environment is
alarming, particularly in the bedroom. Behind soft pillows, the
bed's headrest is an LCD screen displaying a clip from Ridley
Scott's Black Hawk Down (2001). Godard's appropriation of this
Hollywood film is in line with his relentless questioning of the
politics of war and his examination of representations of violence
in cinema. The clip also signifies not only the presence of cinema
and of Hollywood in our dreams; it also graphically illustrates
how images of wars haunt our sleeping hours and make a way into
our unconscious.
13. Although it features some realistic elements, "Today's" apartment
is obviously a set. The general feeling of this home is emptiness;
however, the center of the room is occupied by oversized
scaffolding left lying on its side. This evokes Contempt's paint
cans and ladders in Paul and Camille's new and unfinished
apartment. While the apartment was a sign of the young couple's
climbing up the social ladder and their access to the dream of
modernity, their relationship was coming undone. In Voyage(s), the
use of contemporary furniture makes the apartment look familiar to
the viewers who casually sit on the bed or the sofa to rest or
watch a film clip. In doing so, they become actors in Godard's
installation. His set becomes the mirror of their domestic space
and personal lives. His comment on contemporary society
interpellates the viewers directly: "Today's homes are not safe
nests, and your house itself is most likely a site of
indoctrination." Other details in the room add to Godard's
critique of the present era. On the living-room table, a letter
scale weighs an envelope on which the viewers can read the words
"/plus jamais ça/" ("never again"). Empty, the envelope weighs
little on "Today's" scale. This saying, often used to refer to the
Holocaust, reminds the viewers that Europe closed its eyes once
again during the war in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. Two
other phrases--"/Les lendemains qui chantent/ and "/L'appel de
Stockholm/"--reaffirm his long-term alignment with left-wing
politics.[11 <#foot11>]
Figure 7
*Figure 7: View of the exhibition "Voyage(s) en utopie,
Jean-Luc Godard 1946-2006,
à la recherche d'un théorème perdu."*
(c) Jean-Claude Planchet, Centre Pompidou 2006
14. The kitchen area adds to the domestic atmosphere with its
appliances and modern home décor. However, once the viewers get
closer, they discover that pornographic images are the centerpiece
of Godard's table whose surface is another oversized flat-screen
television. A Godardian pun, this tabletop features two versions
(one short and the other longer) of x-rated films. A mound of
lubricated flesh squirms on the screen while the individual human
bodies suck, grab, and penetrate each other obsessively with
little apparent pleasure. Consumers of objects, images, and flesh,
Godard's viewers are reminded of their affliction. Today's culture
keeps generating new and insatiable desires for its potential
shoppers. Like processed foods and other commodities, pornographic
images have entered contemporary homes. No more seen through
peepholes, pornography has become one of the models that structure
the human psyche. The inclusion of x-rated films adds to the
cynicism of the exhibition. The utopia presented in Voyage(s) is
clearly ironic. "Today's" apartment represents the fake dreams
offered by consumer culture. Godard has examined popular culture
and scrutinized the role of cinema for several decades. Hence,
while he packs thirty-one film clips in /Avant-hier/ and
/Hier/--the rooms that represent the past--Godard includes only
five clips in /Aujourd'hui/. Besides the excerpts discussed above,
he shows a clip from Barocco by André Téchiné, a filmmaker who has
written about him in Cahiers du cinéma, and another from La Môme
vert de gris, a film in which Eddie Constantine plays Lemmy
Caution, the famous FBI agent that Godard recontextualized in
Alphaville. Thus popular culture is taking center-stage in
"Today's" world while Godard's films are noticeably absent from
the present, on which they have barely left a trace.
15. Voyage(s) en Utopie continues Godard's investigation of linear
time. In Notre Musique the script declares repeatedly that
"before" is "after." In this installation, Godard takes his
viewers from the present to the past and back, from Voyage(s) to
Collage(s). Although he gives a semblance of chronology by
numbering the rooms, their numbers are odd and non-sequential.
Meaning only appears when solving the implied equation (-2 +3 =1)
that translates into text: /Avant-hier/ + /Hier/ = /Aujourd'hui/
(The Day Before Yesterday + Yesterday = Today). Godard, critical
of an empty present, has poetically calculated a theorem ascribing
today's absolute value as less than yesterday's. The Pompidou
Center's ban on Collage(s) amplifies the mathematical metaphor.
Godard presents the loss of the original show as taking away from
yesterday's cultural heritage. Devoid of Godard's films, "Today"
might consider itself number one, but it remains an impoverished
experience that is marked negatively. The lack of representation
of Godard's oeuvre in today's room makes him a phenomenon of the
past. Thus, beyond his obvious bitterness at the Pompidou Center,
Godard provides a nostalgic view of a time when he received more
social recognition. Collage(s) could have brought Godard's public
image up to date and strengthened it, but instead viewers are
presented with Voyage(s), its truncated version. Godard does not
merely tackle the French institutional and social system. His use
of still objects is an attempt to suspend linear time. It is a
buffer against cinema's fleeting images and its time-based
constraints. Viewers, who weave in and out of the three separate
rooms, move forward and back; they stop at their own leisure. Like
the hands of a clock, their movement within the space keeps track
of time, but does not go solely in one direction. Traveling
through the exhibition, they draw their own map according to the
visual and conceptual connections they make. In this battle
against time, the viewers' movement in space counters the forward
motion of cinema. Choosing to exhibit static objects, and taking
refuge within the stillness of the museum, the filmmaker could be
warning us about cinema in the digital age. Interestingly,
Voyage(s) surveys the history of cinema but stops just before the
contemporary era. The aging filmmaker does not give a sense of his
beliefs in or of his vision for the future of cinema. Is he
telling the world that the history of cinema stops with Godard? In
Contempt, his set for Cinecittà proclaims an unexpected slogan in
very large letters: "/Il cinema è una invenzione senza
avvenire/."[12 <#foot12>] Could Godard have been anxious about the
evolution of technology as early as 1963? Could he have foreseen
that films would be viewed on iPods and cellular phones? Godard
may be telling his viewers that cinema is now in need of
seclusion, retreat, or protection, and that it will become
necessary for filmmakers and their oeuvre to find sanctuaries
outside movie houses.
/ Art Department, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Visiting Scholar, Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis
University
gavarini@brandeis.edu /
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Notes
1 <#ref1>. For instance, Gordon's installation 24 Hour Psycho
(1993) slowed down Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho to make it last
twenty-four hours. In Home Stories (1991), Matthias Müller
appropriates Hollywood clips. The collaged piece reflects on the
construction of femininity and confronts the audience with their
own voyeurism.
2 <#ref2>. The original title translates to "Collage(s) of France,
archeology of the cinema, according to JLG."
3 <#ref3>. For further ideas on this concept, see Foster,
particularly Rosalind Krauss's essay, "Sculpture in the Expanded
Field."
4 <#ref4>. Noticeably, Boltanski is the only contemporary artist
quoted by Godard in The Old Place, a film on the role of art at
the end of the twentieth century.
5 <#ref5>. Along with directing her own films, Anne-Marie Miéville
has been Godard's main collaborator since 1973. They have
co-directed several films and she is the Art Director of Notre
Musique.
6 <#ref6>. "Pour elle le combat de l'image avec l'ange du texte
était achevé."
7 <#ref7>. When hyphenated, these words mean "the day before
yesterday."
8 <#ref8>. "/Avoir/" means "to have," but "/À voir/" means "must
be seen."
9 <#ref9>. A very controversial subject, these tents were
distributed to homeless people in 2005 and 2006 by Médecins du
Monde (Doctors of the World.) This health and human rights
organization has been working to fight poverty and find housing
for all for several decades. Médecins du Monde provided the tents
as a temporary solution for homeless people in Paris. The goal was
not only to give back some dignity to these people but also to
make the problem of homelessness visible. Besides several acts of
vandalism against the tents, the summer's tourist season has
brought many attempts from the city of Paris to get rid of the camps.
10 <#ref10>. "Puisqu'on les appelle des écrans plats, je ne vois
pas pourquoi on ne les mettrait pas à plat. Dans cette salle, on
est effectivement dans la platitude. On a la cuisine, la chambre à
coucher, la cuisine, le bureau, c'est plat. Il n'y a pas de
profondeur" (Kantcheff).
11 <#ref11>. The first phrase translates to "Toward Singing
Tomorrows." This is the title of Gabriel Peri's autobiography.
Peri was a communist leader who was executed by the Nazis in 1941.
Full of idealism and passion, his last letter describes communism
as a way of life that will bring happy days for the future. The
second phrase translates to "The Stockholm Appeal," which was a
call against nuclear armaments that was signed by one hundred and
fifty million people including Jean-Luc Godard in1950.
12 <#ref12>. "Cinema is an invention with no future."
Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. America. London: Verso, 1988.
Foster, Hal, ed. The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture.
Seattle: Bay, 1983.
Kantcheff, Christophe. "/Un entretien avec Jean-Luc Godard à
propos de son exposition au Centre Pompidou: Je n'ai plus envie
d'expliquer.'/" Politis 29 Jun 2006.
.
Païni, Dominique. "D'après JLG ..." Jean-Luc Godard: Documents.
Ed. Nicole Brenez and Michael Witt. Paris: Editions du Centre
Pompidou, 2006.