Gaïté Lyrique: a theater for digital arts

An event-packed opening in early March saw the historic rebirth of the Gaîté Lyrique in the centre of Paris after a long restoration project and several disastrous management experiences which kept it closed for two decades. A splendid Italian-style theatre, a jewel of Parisian cultural life, and the temple of light theatre in the Second Empire, it had hosted Diaghilev's Russian ballets and the utopias of Jean Vilar's Theatre National Populaire. There were fears that this splendid project could be overshadowed by its brand-new technology, which would focus disproportionately on entertainment, "dumbing down" the 10,000 square metres permanently dedicated to the cutting-edge research of Ars electronica. Moreover, the transition was made possible with a huge public and private financial outlay. Almost half the total annual budget for the management of the Gaïte Lyrique comes from the City of Paris—4.5 million Euros out of a total of 9.5 million.

Now, the task of new director Jérôme Delormas is filled with complex questions, perhaps the same ones hanging over the city's other cultural spaces. To cite another example, after an important renovation, 104, the oldest municipal funeral home in the city bordering Aubervilliers, has now become a big-box events space.

Could the City of Design could follow the same fate? The design of the new Gaîté Lyrique emphasized production, providing it with flexible spaces, theatres and studios with cutting-edge equipment thus transforming it into a world-renowned venue for digital production. The space's agenda is already dense with events dedicated to creative and practices that are, at the moment and at least on paper, highly appealing and marked by a kind of classicism. From Brian Eno to John Hassell for electronic music, to the German-influenced Rimini Protokoll collective, to the British United Visual Artists who were the space's pride during the opening-day ceremonies after having played the same role in such European festivals such Linz, Eindhoven, Berlin and London. It will be up to the artists and their audiences to give meaning to a deliberately ductile space that lends itself to all kinds of interactive practices, from the playful to the very serious.

A visit to the website, a flip through the magazine or a look the products in the online boutique is enough to understand this. In terms of future planning, ensuring return attendance and exploring the possibility of privatizing the space will likely be its winning points. Fundamentally, rental for cultural events is the secret to the success of many twenty-first century cultural projects. Many other activities that are more profitable than art projects already guarantee the survival of many cultural spaces in Paris—like the Palais de Tokyo—after their early media success and subsequent proliferation of boutiques, cafes and restaurants.

It must also be taken into account that digital culture is inextricably anchored to the future of cultural destinations. After all, the apparition of a huge video-game hall is no longer that troublesome. A festival entitled 2062 is scheduled in the near future; it will be devoted to the aspects of digital creativity that could transform our daily life over the next fifty years. A program of events focused on skate culture is the key to anchoring an audience of children and young people.

Like the mascot of the Gaïte Lyrique—a masked penguin emerging from the theatre with a block of "cold technology" that spreads exponentially around the world—the whole does not remain simply a promise but that, as in its launch animation, all may sooner or later invest in and appropriate the cultural rhizomic line sprouting from what will be the near future of the Gaïté, tout court.
Ivo Bonacorsi

Gaîté Lyrique, Paris
www.gaite-lyrique.net

Manuelle Gautrand, born in 1961, established his agency in 1991 and over the past 20 years has designed numerous buildings in a variety of domains, both public and private: cultural facilities, office buildings, commercial spaces. It was the "C42", Citroën's flagship showroom on the Champs-Elysées in Paris, in 2007, which catapulted him to fame in France and abroad. Besides la Gaîté Llyrique, he is presently working on several important building such as the Musée d'Art Moderne, d'Art contemporain et d'Art Brut in Lille, the Cité des Affaires at Saint- Etienne and the "Origami" office complex on the avenue de Friedland at Paris.

Gaîté Lyrique, Paris
Architect: Manuelle Gautrand Architecture. Laurent Hernandez, François Terrier, Valérie de Vincelles, Cédric Martenot
Project team: Frédéric Arnoult, Marie Duval, Christophe Régnier
Conservation: Régis Grima
Scenography: Jean-Paul Chabert
Acoustic engineer: Lamoureux
Structural engineer: Iosis
Multimedia: VDI: Labeyrie & Ass.
Signage: Nicolas Vrignault
Area: 9,500 m²
Competition phase: 2003–2007
Construction phase: 2007–2010