Eighth Sidération festival of space imaginings organized in Paris by the Observatoire de l’Espace, CNES’s arts and science laboratory
Sidération is the only arts and science festival of its kind organized by a space agency. This yearly event seeks to share the rich diversity of space imaginings with its audience, bringing live performance, visual arts and scientific storytelling together in the same place, at the same moment. For its eighth edition, artists, authors and scientists from all horizons have delved into the archives of space history and come up with 40 original creations on the theme of ‘anecdotes and news events’.
‘Anecdotes and events’ the theme for 2018
The artists taking part in this eighth edition of the Sidération festival were invited to seek inspiration in the unnoticed events that have shaped the largely unknown course of space history, for example from the lives of the pioneers of the space adventure, the multiple phases of a space programme or the way human spaceflight impacts our consciousness. Such anecdotes and events are often key links in the chain of technological achievements and human accomplishments that receive all the media attention.
Event highlights
There will be masterclasses on philosophy, tourism and music in microgravity, performance seminars, scientific confessions, artistic investigations of space anecdotes, a spoken journal of space events and an exhibition of works and objects with a space story to tell. The variety of approaches adopted by each artist and scientist—through the spoken word, pictures, sound or writing—will show how the space adventure is closely intertwined with human history and holds its own special place in our collective memory. For Gérard Azoulay, the festival’s director, “Sidération 2018 intends to be a place of interactions and experimentations that will reveal for our utmost pleasure the universal nature of the everyday stories behind the space adventure.”
Since 2000, CNES’s Observatoire de l'Espace has been striving to bring space to citizens through channels other than science outreach, especially by supporting creations in the plastic, performing and literary arts. The Observatoire de l'Espace encourages artists to approach the theme of space outside the usual codes of science-fiction. By revealing space’s place in our history, imagination and daily lives, it casts our contemporary society in a new light.
Sidération festival, 23-25 March 2018
CNES - 2, place Maurice Quentin - 75001 Paris
cp197-2017_-_festival_sideration_2018_va.pdf (pdf - 496.57 KB)Observatoire de l’Espace PRESS CONTACT
Amand Berteigne & Co - Amand Berteigne Tel. +33 (0)6 84 28 80 65 amand.berteigne@orange.fr
CNES PRESS CONTACT
Pascale Bresson Tel. +33 (0)1 44 76 75 39 pascale.bresson@cnes.fr
