FICTION & NON-FICTION SOUNDWALK

Presented by

Soundwalk Collective, the New York- based group of sound artists, collaborates with Crossing the Line to produce a free downloadable audio-guided walk along Museum Mile. The audio recording features commissioned anecdotes inspired by a building, object, or place in the neighborhood and written by French writers, Olivier Cadiot, Philippe Claudel, and Camille Laurens, and New York-based authors Teju Cole and John Giorno. The walk takes listeners, using their MP3 player, into the authors’ worlds and on a journey—real or imagined—to the source of the inspiration. The spoken texts, available in both English and French versions, are supported by original music and sound design created by Soundwalk.

“Soundwalk...like movies you can stroll through” –TIME Magazine

This event is part of Fiction & Non-Fiction, one of Crossing the Line 2011's three curatorial program perspectives.

Co-curated by Gérard Cherqui

Funded by Etant donnés, the French-American Fund for the Performing Arts, a Program of FACE, and the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD)

Bring MP3 player or smartphone and headphones.

The soundwalk is ongoing & can take place every Wed, Fri, Sat, and Sun, from 11am–5:30pm

The soundwalk takes approximately 1.5 hours to complete

Start at the information desk in the Great Hall, just inside the main entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, located at 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street.

Teju Cole is a writer, photographer, and art historian. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, he got his start at age fifteen through regularly published cartoons in Prime People, Nigeria's version of Vanity Fair. Cole moved to the United States at age seventeen, where he studied art history. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Transition, and other journals. He is the author of the novella Every Day is for the Thief. His debut novel Open City was released to critical acclaim by Random House in February. He is at work on a non-fiction narrative of Lagos, Nigeria. He currently lives in Brooklyn.

Start at the information desk in the Great Hall, just inside the main entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, located at 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street.

Olivier Cadiot is a poet, novelist, and translator. He is the author of L'Art Poetic (1988; English version by Sun and Moon Press, 1999) and several novels, many of which were adapted for the stage by French director Ludovic Lagarde: Futur, Ancien, Fugitif (1993), Le colonel des Zouaves (1997), Retour définitive et durable de l'être aimé, Fairy Queen (2002), Un nid pour quoi faire (2007), and Un mage en été (2010). Both Un nid pour quoi faire and Un mage en été were adapted for the stage by Lagarde for the 2010 Avignon Festival to which Cadiot was invited as an Associate Artist. Cadiot works regularly with musicians and composers, including Pascal Dusapin, with whom he created Il-li-ko and the opera Romeo et Juliette, and the French rock musician Rodolphe Burger.

Cadiot is also the translator of the Psalms and Song of Songs for the new version of The Bible, published in 2002. He has been associated with the artistic collective Comédie de Reims as a playwright since 2009. Some of Cadiot's works have been translated into English by Charles Bernstein and Cole Swensen, including Colonel Zoo in 2005, among others, and published in American poetry reviews (Serie d'Ecriture n°7, published by Burning Deck Press).

Start at the entrance of Cafe Sabarsky / The Neue Gallerie located at 1048 Fifth Avenue at 86th St.

Philippe Claudel is a French writer and film director. Born in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe in Lorraine, France, Claudel began his career teaching in prisons in the nearby city of Nancy. There, Claudel was inspired to write short stories, novels, and eventually screenplays. His time as a prison employee strongly influenced his work, and the author has said that the experience shaped his ideas about guilt and the judicial system. Claudel is best known for his novel Les Âmes grises (Grey Souls), which won the French Prix Renaudot, was shortlisted for the American Gumshoe Award, and won Sweden's Martin Beck Award; and Les petites mécaniques, which won the Goncourt Prize for short stories. In 2008, Claudel wrote and directed I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime). Starring Kristen Scott Thomas, the film won a BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in English and a César Award for Best First Feature for Claudel. Broderick's Report, Claudel's hallucinatory tale of an uneasy homecoming after a wrenching tragedy, was awarded the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. In addition to writing and directing, Claudel is a Professor of Literature at the University of Nancy.

Start in front of the Guggenheim Museum located at 1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th St.

After studying modern literature, Camille Laurens taught in France and then spent twelve years as a teacher in Morocco. She now lives in Paris, and is the author of an autobiographical narrative, Philippe (1995), as well as eight novels, including Dans ces bras-là (Prix Femina 2000), L'amour, roman (2003), Ni toi ni moi (2006), all published by Folio and translated into numerous languages. Laurens's most recent novel, Romance nerveuse, was published in January 2010 by Gallimard. She has also authored a number of playful explorations of the French lexicon, published in three books: Quelques-uns (1999), Le Grain des mots (2003), and Tissé par mille (2007), a collection of the columns she wrote for the French radio station France Culture. Passionate about art, she has collaborated with photographer Remi Vinet for Cet absent-là (2004) and performed in lecture-concerts with the electro-acoustic composer Philippe Mion, (CD Tissé par mille, coll. A voix haute, Gallimard, 2007).

Start at the 90th St entrance to Central Park at Fifth Avenue.

John Giorno is an American poet and performance artist. Born in New York, Giorno graduated from Columbia University in 1958, and first rose to prominence as the subject of Andy Warhol's seminal film Sleep (1963). Warhol became Giorno's lover and, together with his contemporaries Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, inspired Giorno to apply the Pop Art techniques of appropriation of found imagery to his poetry, resulting in his 1964 American Book of the Dead. In 1965, Giorno founded a not-for-profit production company, Giorno Poetry Systems, using innovative technology to connect poetry to new audiences. His Dial-a-Poem event, making short poems by contemporary poets available over the telephone, was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, and generated a series of LP records featuring artists William Burroughs, John Ashbery, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Mapplethorpe, and others.

Teju Cole
Olivier Cadiot
Philippe Claudel
Camille Laurens
John Giorno

Martin Rauchbauer / Cafe Sabarsky Narrator

Co-curated by Gérard Cherqui

Funded by Etant donnés, the French-American Fund for the Performing Arts, a Program of FACE, and the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD)

Stephan Crasneanscki / Founder
Dug Winningham / Sound Design
Victoria Jonathan / Production Paris Office
Jake Harper / Production New York Office
Kitty Shi / Production Assistant
Colette Dahanne / French Dialog Editor

Adele Balderston / Web Design
Benjamin Pequet / Web Development