Paris is home to many museums and art galleries, as well as cultural centers: these special places take us on a journey of discovery of a foreign country and culture. Italy, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Bulgaria, Ireland, Mexico... You could almost travel around the world, without leaving Paris!
Center Wallonie Bruxelles: programme, exhibitions... all you need to know about the cultural center in Paris
Attention contemporary art lovers! The Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, located in the 4ᵉ arrondissement of Paris, opposite the Centre Pompidou, awaits you to fill up on knowledge. This cultural institution, inaugurated in 1979, highlights the artistic scene of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation through a varied program: visual arts, live performances, cinema and literature. Want to plan a visit? We'll tell you all about it! [Read more]
Looking for a change of scenery? Great news—the Wallonie-Bruxelles Centre is opening its doors to you as well. Even better: it will be ready to welcome us on Saturday, May 23, 2026, for a new edition of the Night of Museums. For one evening, enjoy free and original activities that plunge us into Belgian culture.
Every year, the Night of Museums transforms Paris and its region: this festive, all-ages event opens the doors of cultural and artistic venues to everyone for a magical, time-bending evening. On this occasion, museums pull out all the stops to captivate the curious and showcase their treasures anew: guided tours, games, concerts, performances... anything can happen! So find out what awaits you on May 23, 2026 at the Wallonia-Brussels Centre, for this eagerly anticipated event.
The festival ((((INTERFERENCE_S)))) _ festival de substrat sonore _ takes up the banner of research that self-differentiates, self-edits - a festival of the unpredictable, of decoding, carried by a pack of artists hunting buried realities and unsuspected sonorities.
It unfolds inside the Center’s spaces through an anarkhè-exhibition that gathers research-creations probing the sounds of the visual installation to radiophonic works, but also the time of events called 'Journées d'Intercession'.
These days offer a way to extend the festival’s stakes by creating moments of condensation: instants when works cease to be stabilized entities and activate into evolving situations, experiential protocols, and collective ecologies.
They take place, they occupy, they spill over.
Workshops, activations of artworks, collaborative pieces, edible proposals, performances, live sets, concerts.
Here, the public is invited to discover the exhibition spaces as artworks are activated and performance protocols unfold throughout the day.
About ((((INTERFERENCE_S)))) _ festival de substrat sonore :
An outward-facing, extra-territorial, and sidereal aim for this schizo-festival, which reconstitutes its morphology in extenso as an anarkhè exhibition, a weekend climax of performances, orbiting evenings, and cyber-space flux.
The festival ((((INTERFERENCE_S)))) stands as the banner of research that self-differentiates, self-edits, and generates irregular arrangements - a festival of the unpredictable, of decoding, of disassembly, of indeterminacy with a highly poetic flavor carried by artists hunting buried realities and unsuspected sonorities.
From the vessel: sounds will thunder, reverberate, vibrate, and rise—emancipated from conventional musicalities—language of artifacts, machines, media, the semiotic springs of banal sonorities, noises, vibrations, electro-magnetic presences, elemental forces relegated to subaltern zones will invade the spaces.
Furtive sonic immanences will form a blazing canopy inviting experience, sensation, and perception.
Inviting exploration of the sonic substratum in its most de-enclaved and falsificationist forms: from visual installation to radiophonic creations, including listening sessions, concerts, and performances, ((((INTERFERENCE_S)))) measures the powerful capacity of sound to freaktionalize reality. The festival helps unfold the virtual within the actual and to amplify possibilities.
Within the exhibition space: intonarumori[3] reside—some existing autopoeitic or sparked by artistic gestures, pieces that, like augurs, ring out presences from elsewhere and non-linear time. A certain mysticism reigns there, coexisting with an aesthetic of disassembly, feral, which emblazons improbable assemblage[4] - disruptive dissimilarity. The anatomies and guts of machines will be laid bare to reveal their mechanics. Many works mediate a hermeneutics of “doing,” and all share an aesthetics of the indefinite.
The sound experience is of a chaosist order, restituting to reality its inextricability, its incommensurability – it is an encounter with darkness that enlightens, with wandering that anchors us to this drift which does not lead astray[5].
This edition is again distinguished by a gift – a donation of archives from philosopher, theorist, activist, artist Tetsuo Kogawa - a blazing figure in radio-art – mischievous author of agentive concepts like narrow-casting, a creator of the transmission phenomenon who inspired a pirate-radio project we carry and will reveal later… once everything has been sown.
It also stems from alliances with ((the sound 7)) - sound art gallery
which for 25 years has presented unique pieces of sound art, with the Soft Signal Festival exploring since 2017 the interfaces between humans and machines, reality and fiction, sound and silence. It presents two sound pieces drawn from creation residencies within Q-O2*laboratory sonore anchored in Brussels.
On the occasion of this edition, a first sound residency is also inaugurated, offering access to the Musée du Quai Branly’s sound archives among others.
Conspire means to breathe together… let us conspire and virtualize.
Stéphanie Pécourt
Founder and curator of the festival
With the artists:
Accou Laposte & Marjolein Guldentops - Alan Affichard - Alexis Bourdon - Alexis Puget - Andrès Navarro Garcia - Basile Richon - Bear Bones, Lay Low - Bertrand Larrieu - Claire Williams - Cyril Leclerc - Davide Tidoni - Felix Luque Sanchez - François K - Graciela Muñoz Farida - Hugo Livet - Hugo Vessiller-Fonfreide - Jérôme Grivel - Jorge Haro - Julien Poidevin - Kinda Hassan - Lesley Flanigan - Lina Filipovich - Luc Avargues - Lucian Moriyama - Maryia Kamarova - Marc Melià - Mirja Busch - MNPL - Octave Courtin - Pedro Olivera - Roxane Métayer - Simon Mahungu - SMOG - Sonia Saroya - Tetsuo Kogawa
The festival ((((INTERFERENCE_S)))) _ a festival of substrate sound _ takes up the banner for research that self-differentiates and self-edits—an festival of the unpredictable, of decoding, carried by artists who hunt for buried realities and unsuspected sonic textures.
It unfolds across the Center’s spaces through an anarkhè-exhibition that gathers research-creations probing the sonic range from the visual installation to radiophonic pieces, but also the time of events dubbed "Journées d'Intercession."
These days are designed to extend the festival’s stakes by creating moments of condensation: instances when works cease to be stable entities and begin to activate, turning into evolving situations, experimental protocols, and collective ecologies.
They take shape, they occupy, they overflow.
Workshops, activations of works, collaborative pieces, edible proposals, performances, live acts, concerts.
### Here, Sonia Saroya — "Drum Machine" - A two-part participatory workshop (Museum Night and Nuit Blanche) built around her visible sound installation in the exhibition.
In line with the logics outlined by Charles Stépanoff — where certain ritual practices rely on an open circulation of know-how and on everyone’s access to the instrument — these two sessions extend the piece into a space of co-creation. Where the drum once functioned as a circuit and the ceremonial object as an autonomous machine, the action now returns in a shared form: to manipulate, connect, transform, and thus concretely test how technical devices produce sound, shape listening, and steer our imaginations.
These moments are not about producing closed forms but about activating a shared process. By uncovering the principles behind the device — capable of generating signals, rhythms, and acoustic presences — and then giving form to their own variations, participants participate in circulating gestures and knowledge, in a dynamic where understanding is built through experience. The circuit ceases to be merely a functional architecture and becomes a sound source, a medium of attention, a platform for projection and critical reflection.
Designed as an evolving base, the installation transforms with each contribution. Elements from the sessions gradually join the exhibition space, reconfiguring its look and altering both its auditory textures and visible forms. The piece thus unfolds as an open, cumulative structure, traversed by successive inputs — a living artistic organism in progress, where every intervention shifts the sonic landscape and prolongs the overall vibration.
These two encounters declare making as an act of sharing and reclamation: a way to open access to tools, redistribute expertise, and make technique a field of sensitive experimentation, where listening becomes a mode of paying attention to the world and where imaginaries are composed collectively.
The ((((INTERFERENCE_S)))) _ festival of sonic substrate _ makes its banner an exploration of self-differentiating, self-publishing research—an festival of the unpredictable, of decoding, led by artists who hunt for buried realities and unsuspected sonorities.
It unfolds across the Centre’s spaces through an anarkhè-exhibition that gathers research-creations probing the sounds of the visual installation, radiophonic works, and also the time of events dubbed "Journées d'Intercession."
These days aim to extend the festival’s stakes by creating moments of condensation: instances where works cease to be stabilized entities and instead activate as evolving situations, as experimental protocols, as collective ecologies.
They take place, they occupy, they spill over.
Workshops, activations of works, collaborative pieces, edible proposals, performances, live acts, concerts.
### Here, Jérôme Grivel — VVV (Variations Vociférantes Virales) - Participatory Performance
With VVV (Variations Vociférantes Virales), Jérôme Grivel presents a multi-layered project built around the voices of a heterogeneous group. During a participatory workshop, after an initiation into extended vocal practices, participants are invited to interpret, alone or in groups, instructions drawn from an open score, so as to vocally reveal the emotional and psychological states that traverse them (joy, fear, sadness, frustration, anger, etc.).
From the recordings made during the workshop, the artist composes a performance accompanied by sound pieces broadcast through portable sculpture-speakers, manipulated by performers moving from the interior of the exhibition space to the street and adjacent areas. Thus, vocal expressions emerge—reminiscent of protests, groans, pleas, or shouts. The artist also steps onto the stage as a soloist, performing a vocal score crafted in dialogue with the pre-recorded sound pieces.
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VVV (Variations Vociférantes Virales) unfolds as a participatory, transdisciplinary performance setup. The project rests on a preparatory vocal workshop that gathers a diverse group of participants, invited to explore extended vocal practices from an open score. This step generates a collective sonic material grounded in the expression of emotional and psychological states, without hierarchy or rigid linguistic codification.
The recordings from this workshop then serve as the foundation for a sound composition performed publicly. It employs portable sculpture-speakers—autonomous sound-diffusion devices—that performers carry and maneuver as they move through the interior of the exhibition space and onward into the public realm. The journey threads from inside to outside, private to collective, creating a porous border between the two.
At the same time, the artist assumes the role of soloist, delivering a live vocal score in interaction with the pre-recorded sound materials, in a dynamic play of harmony, counterpoint, and dissonance. The result is a living composition in which recorded voices and live voices overlay and respond to one another.
Through this setup, Jérôme Grivel questions the voice’s capacity to become a tool of emancipation when freed from normative language constraints and broadcast into the public space in heightened forms (shout, breath, groan, whistle, eruptive cry). The project invites a rethinking of vocal manifestations as vectors of meaning and expression, foregrounding a collective, sensorial experience.
Far from a negative or reductive reading of these expressions, VVV explores their potential to address and circulate among individuals, fostering the emergence of dynamic empathy. Voices thus become relational elements capable of transforming space into a site of shared listening and sensitive interaction, where affects propagate and modulate through contact with others.
The ((((INTERFERENCE_S)))) festival — a festival of sonic substrate — takes up the banner of research that differentiates itself, self-publishes itself: a festival of the unpredictable, of decoding, carried by artists who hunt down buried realities and unsuspected soundscapes.
It unfolds across the Center’s spaces through an anarkhè-exhibition that gathers research-creations probing the sounds of both the visual installation and radiophonic works, but also the time of events named “Days of Intercession.”
These days aim to extend the festival’s stakes by creating moments of condensation: instances where works cease to be stable entities, activate themselves, and become evolving situations, experimental protocols, and collective ecologies.
They take place, they occupy, they overflow.
Workshops, activations of pieces, collaborative works, edible proposals, performances, live events, concerts.
### Here, Maryia Kamarova — Atelier Sound Artifacts as Material - Language: English
This workshop envisions amplification not merely as a technical process but as a strategy of attention and perceptual decentering — a way to enter into friction with acoustic ecology and the materiality of sound devices. Amplifying is as much about revealing as it is about erasing: bringing certain presences to light while relegating others to zones of indeterminacy. Amplification thus acts as an unstable, sometimes dissident mediation of what we hear — a move to shift listening thresholds.
How can amplification arise from attention itself, by shifting our sensitive scales and modulating our listening regimes?
Participants will be introduced to work techniques that rely on accessible, low-tech tools: self-constructed electret microphones, portable recorders, hi-fi playback systems — a small, ready-to-activate piece of tech-craft that can be repurposed, retooled, tuned. An experimental session focused on the direct manipulation of instruments will be dedicated to what is commonly called sonic artifacts — distortions, breaths, feedback, turbulence, contact sounds, and other manifestations typically labeled as interference in field- recording practices.
These phenomena will be explored not as residues to fix, but as a vibrational material capable of being activated through listening, recording, and performative enunciation. Between chance and mastery, drift and intention, technological imperfections will be welcomed as active forces, agents of composition. The aim is to let machines speak through their glitches, tremors, and excesses — to compose with the unpredictable and to open immediate, situated, context-sensitive responses.
The session will culminate in a collective performative intervention within the exhibition space — a circulation of sonic flux, an activation of acoustic presences, an attempt to surface the sonic substrate in its most unstable, most unruly form.
The INTERFERENCE_S festival, a festival of sonic substrate, champions research that self-differentiates and self-edits—a festival of the unpredictable, of decoding, carried by artists who are trackers of buried realities and unsuspected sonorities.
It unfolds across the Centre’s spaces through an anarchic-exhibition that gathers research-creations probing the sounds from the visual installation to radiophonic works, as well as the time of events named 'Days of Intercession'.
These days aim to prolong the festival’s stakes by creating moments of condensation: instances where works cease to be stabilized entities and become active, evolving situations, experimental protocols, and collective ecologies.
They take place, they claim space, they overflow.
Workshops, activations of works, collaborative pieces, edible proposals, performances, live sets, concerts.
### Here, Cyril Leclerc — B A G N O L E - Immersive Concert
"Bagnole" invites a few spectators, sitting inside a stationary car, to a live concert lasting up to 20 minutes, centered on the themes of car, travel, and collectivity. These immersive, sonic-visual performances invite experiences of immobile travel.
Symbol of freedom, richness, and today a major ecological issue, the car is a central object in our contemporary imaginaries. Beyond utilitarian function, it embodies an experience of movement and travel widely explored in cinema (Thelma & Louise, Sur un arbre perché) as in literature (On the Road, Crash).
The project offers a live concert to a few spectators seated in a stationary car for up to 20 minutes. This setup creates an intimate, immersive listening situation, where the vehicle becomes both a stage space and a perceptual device.
These concert-performances provide immersive sonic and visual experiences, building forms of "immobile journeys." The apparatus plays on proximity, sensory perception, and the transformation of a daily object into a space for artistic experimentation.
The INTERFERENCE_S festival — a festival of sound substrata — takes up the banner for research that differentiates and self-publishes itself. A festival of the unpredictable, of decoding, carried by artists who hunt down buried realities and unsuspected sonorities.
It unfolds across the Centre’s spaces through an anarkhè-exhibition that collects research-creations probing how the sounds of the visual installation converse with radiophonic works, and also the time of events dubbed 'Journées d'Intercession'.
These days aim to extend the festival’s stakes by crafting moments of condensation: instants when works stop being fixed entities and begin to activate, becoming evolving situations, experimental protocols, and collective ecologies.
They take place, they occupy, they overflow.
Workshops, activations of works, collaborative pieces, edible proposals, performances, live sets, concerts.
### Here, Simon Mahungu — "Fragments of a Memory in Motion"
Fragments of a Memory in Motion probes memory as a language in flux. Drawing on sound archives and voices gathered between Brussels and Kinshasa, Simon Mahungu composes a polyphony of fragments, silences, and reverberations. The project invites us to hear a poetry of transforming memories, where languages, bodies, and imaginaries cross and rewrite one another.
--
Fragments of a Memory in Motion is a sound-installation project that questions the contemporary circulation of voices and archives. Welcomed as an artist-in-residence within the INTERFERENCE_S program initiated by the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, in dialogue with Archipel / Salé 2026, Simon Mahungu develops a research project in which memory is treated as a process in flux, always in the act of becoming.
In collaboration with the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, he works from ethnographic sound collections drawn from colonial contexts. These archives are juxtaposed with sounds of the present: fragments of speech, soundscapes recorded between Brussels and Kinshasa, voices in transit, and sounds produced at the very moment of listening.
By gathering these materials in one space, the artist brings forth unpredictable dialogues in which memory recomposes itself in real time, in contact with the public. The approach is not about reproducing the past, but about traversing it, observing what it becomes as it circulates among different bodies, territories, and temporalities.
This démarche also invites a critical reflection on the conditions under which archives exist: who speaks, who listens, and in what context. The artistic gesture seeks to move these memories, to free them from any geographic, historical, or institutional assignment, in order to reveal their living, relational dimension.
At the heart of this practice, poetry acts as a method. It links fragments, brings silences and absences to light, and turns listening into a sensorial experience. Each sound becomes a relational material, contributing to a writing in motion.
Fragments of a Memory in Motion thus offers a sensory and reflective experience in which archives become active material, capable of transforming in the present and opening up new ways of inhabiting listening.
The INTERFERENCE_S festival — a festival of sonic substrate — marches as the banner for research that self-differs, self-edits: a festival of the unpredictable, of decoding, carried by artists who track down buried realities and unsuspected sounds.
It unfolds across the Centre’s spaces through an anarkhè-exhibition that gathers research-creations probing the sonic range from the visual-installation acoustics to radio productions, and also the time of events dubbed 'Days of Intercession'.
These days aim to extend the festival’s stakes by creating moments of condensation: instants when works cease to be stabilized entities and begin to activate, becoming projects-in-the-making, experimental protocols, and collective ecologies.
They take place, they occupy, they spill over.
Workshops, activations of works, collaborative pieces, edible propositions, performances, live sets, concerts.
### Here, Maryia Kamarova — Atelier Sound Artifacts as Material: restitution
This workshop treats amplification not only as a technical process but as a strategy of attention and perceptual decentering, a way to brush against the acoustic ecology and the materiality of sound equipment. Amplifying is about revealing as much as erasing: making certain presences emerge while consigning others to zones of indeterminacy. Amplification thus acts as an unstable, sometimes dissident mediation of what we hear — a shifting of listening thresholds.
How can amplification be guided by attention itself, by shifting our sensory scales and modulating our listening regimes?
Participants will be introduced to low-tech, accessible techniques: self-built electret microphones, portable recorders, hi-fi audio systems — a small piece of technological lutherie ready to be activated, repurposed, pushed to the limit. An experimental session, grounded in direct manipulation of instruments, will focus on what is commonly called sonic artefacts — distortions, breath, feedback, turbulence, contact sounds, and other manifestations typically tagged as interference in field-recording practices.
These phenomena will be approached not as residues to be corrected but as a vibrational material capable of being activated through listening, recording, and performative enunciation. Between chance and mastery, drift and intention, technological imperfections will be welcomed as operative forces, agents of composition. The aim is to let the machines speak through their glitches, tremors, excesses — to compose with the unpredictable and open immediate, situated, context-sensitive responses.
The session will culminate in a collective performative intervention within the exhibition space — circulating the sonic flows, activating the acoustic presences, attempting to surface the sonic substrate in what is most unstable, most unruly.
The festival ((((INTERFERENCE_S)))) _ festival of the sound substrate _ brands itself as the banner for research that self-differentiates and self-edits — a festival of the unpredictable, of decoding, carried by sleuthing artists of buried realities and unsuspected sonorities.
It unfolds within the Center’s spaces through an anarkhè-exhibition that gathers research-creations exploring the sonic range from the visual installation to radio works, but also the time of events titled 'Journées d'Intercession'.
These days aim to extend the festival’s stakes by creating moments of condensation: instants when the works cease to be stabilized entities to activate and become evolving situations, experimental protocols, collective ecologies.
They take place, they occupy, they overflow.
Workshops, activations of works, collaborative pieces, edible proposals, performances, live, concerts.
### Here, Navarro & Bourdon — LIVE - Carte blanche to the SMOG collective
SMOG is a monthly series based in Brussels (Belgium) for 11 years, with more than 130 evenings organized, dedicated to contemporary musical creation in its broadest sense. Conceived as a meeting space, SMOG seeks to create connections between practices, sonic aesthetics and audiences that often coexist without truly crossing. At the heart of the project is a particular attention to musical research, whether it sits within contemporary written language or within forms drawn from other hybrid practices. What links these proposals is not a genre, but an artistic demand and a will to research. SMOG evenings, often structured in two or three parts, bring these universes into dialogue to provoke new listening and shifts in perception. SMOG thus aims to build bridges between scenes usually separated, from contemporary classical to techno, from punk to string quartet, in the desire to push beyond aesthetic frames and traditional venues, offering evenings where different ways of making and listening to music can coexist in the same space.
The festival ((((INTERFERENCE_S)))) _ a festival of sonic substrate _ stands as the banner for research that differentiates and self-edits, a festival of the unpredictable, of decoding, carried by sleuthing artists of buried realities and unsuspected sonorities.
It unfolds within the Centre’s spaces through an anarkhè-exhibition that brings together research-creations exploring the sonorities—from the visual installation to radio works—and also the time of events titled 'Journées d'Intercession'.
These days are meant to deepen the festival’s stakes by creating moments of condensation: instants when works cease to be fixed entities and activate themselves, becoming evolving situations, experiential protocols, and collective ecologies.
They take place, they occupy, they spill over.
Workshops, activations of works, collaborative pieces, edible proposals, performances, live sets, concerts.
### Here, Bear Bones, Lay Low — LIVE - Carte blanche to the SMOG collective
SMOG is a monthly series based in Brussels (Belgium) for 11 years, with over 130 evenings organized, devoted to contemporary musical creation in its broadest sense. Designed as a meeting space, SMOG aims to connect practices, sonic aesthetics, and audiences that often coexist without truly intersecting. At the project’s core is a particular attention to musical research, whether it appears in contemporary written language or in forms drawn from other hybrid practices. What links these proposals is not a genre but an artistic demand and a research intention. SMOG evenings, often structured in two or three parts, bring these worlds into dialogue to provoke new listening and shifts in perception. SMOG seeks to bridge scenes usually kept apart—ranging from contemporary classical to techno, from punk to string quartet—driven by the desire to push beyond traditional aesthetic frames and venues, offering evenings where different ways of making and listening to music can coexist in a single space.
Continue your cultural evening in the 4th arrondissement, with other participating venues.
The Night of Museums takes over Paris this Saturday, May 23, 2026. An excellent opportunity to explore museums that are sometimes costly, occasionally tucked away, and often overlooked—yet they offer memorable experiences. Over 80 museums across the city are opening their doors for this special night. Check out the program by arrondissement. [Read more]
Dates and Opening Time
On May 23, 2026
Location
Center Wallonie Bruxelles
127 Rue Saint-Martin
75004 Paris 4
Access
Metro line 11 "Rambuteau" station
Prices
Free
Recommended age
For all
Official website
www.cwb.fr
Center Wallonie Bruxelles: programme, exhibitions... all you need to know about the cultural center in Paris
Night of Museums 2026 in Paris: The Must-See Program by District
