LA CONFÉRENCE DU PALAIS

On the occasion of the exhibition Le Grand désenvoutèrent at the Palais de Tokyo, LA CONFÉRENCE DU PALAIS invites you to descend into the basement of a Palace in ruins to Level -300.

Let’s discover together the best kept secrets.

“Drawing on the history of the building and its programming since 1937, and relying on the anecdotes and rumors of the place, Sammy Stein has created a fictional drawing for the Grand désenvoûtement that is as much a lecture as a walking guide. A guided tour from the upper floors of a ruined Palais de Tokyo to its subterranean levels takes the reader through layers of forgotten stories, transformed by fiction and putting into perspective the imaginary worlds associated with or produced by the institution. Each level of the drawn building reveals traces of great artistic gestures, of the art center’s economic model, of political episodes, of destroyed spaces and fantasized exhibitions. Sammy Stein allows these narratives to escape from the Palais de Tokyo by offering the public to leave with a copy of the book. On the walls, photographs hijack representations of this monumental architecture and the many institutions it has housed since the 1930s, revealing repressed imaginings at the crossroads of the political, the fantastic, and the romantic.” Adélaïde Blanc, co-curator of the exhibition “Le Grand désenvoutement”, Palais de Tokyo, December 2022