Delayed for seven weeks by France’s coronavirus lockdown, Les Bassins de Lumières, the world’s largest digital arts centre, opened on 10 June in a wartime submarine base in Bordeaux’s docklands.
Strict hygiene and social distancing measures mean visitors can only buy tickets online, are temperature-checked at the entrance, and must use masks and hand sanitiser. However, since the building has more than 3,000m2 of floor space (equivalent to 12 tennis courts), “everyone has at least five square metres of individual space”, says director Augustin de Cointet. “The rules are there, but discreet, as we want everyone to enjoy the full experience.”
The exhibition is a spectacular, sensorially overwhelming light-and-sound display of the works of Gustav Klimt projected on to every surface of the base’s four 110-metre-long, 12-metre-high chambers. Imperial Vienna’s neoclassical interiors turn into Klimt’s golden images of The Kiss, Judith and the Head of Holofernes and his portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. The exhibition’s first visitors, who’ve become accustomed to staring at their living room walls for France’s 11-week confinement, seem overwhelmed, open-mouthed behind their masks as they wander along the giant chambers’ walkways and bridges. Klimt’s whiplash golden coils fade to his landscapes of forests, lakes and orchards, transforming, in turn, into Egon Schiele’s buckled forms and back to Klimt’s female figures and vibrant patchworks, all to a soundtrack of Wagner, Beethoven, Mahler and Philip Glass.
The Klimt projections have already appeared at Culturespaces’ two other digital venues in France, the Atelier des Lumières in Paris and the Carrières de Lumières in Les Baux-de-Provence, but were redesigned for Bordeaux. “Les Bassins has a totally different atmosphere,” says de Cointet. “For one thing it’s gigantic: it is five times larger than the Atelier and three times the size of the Carrières, but what really makes Les Bassins unique is the reflections in the water.”
After the Klimt, which lasts around 40 minutes, the second programme is devoted to artist and musician Paul Klee, whose abstract blocks of colour have been reworked to fit in with the geometrical structure of the Bassins. Klee’s frizzy goldfish interweaves with puppets and a gallery of cubist portraits while his underwater creatures appear to dive into the deep pools as Mozart’s The Magic Flute plays through the chambers’ 80 hidden speakers.
The exhibition is what anyone caged up for almost three months needs: vast spaces, loud music, dazzling visual effects and crowds unravelling along the cavernous gangways. Beside the huge chambers is Le Cube, a 220m2 box showing digitalised projections of contemporary art (currently showing is Ocean Data, by Turkish collective Ouchhh) and a circular cell, the seven-metre-high La Citerne, which allows visitors to lie down and experience the immersive exhibitions from a different viewpoint.
Being there is emotional and dreamlike; you think you recognise something from Klimt or Klee, but it’s suddenly a thousand times the size, repeated infinitely and re-appearing on the opposite wall. Despite the coronavirus, de Cointet is hoping for around 400,000 visitors a year. Entry is in half-hour slots with many already sold out for June. He expects visitors to spend about an hour and a half watching the projections in the Bassins, but they can stay for as long as they want.
Construction of the German-built submarine base, the U-Boot-Bunker, began in 1941 to house 15 submarines in Nazi-occupied Bordeaux. It withstood allied bombardment until the city was liberated in August 1944 and, over the decades, has been used as a metallurgy plant, occasional festival venue and film set. Culturespaces took two years to create Les Bassins de Lumières, installing 90 video-projectors and 100km of optical fibres, but the entire 41,000m2 site is being redeveloped as a vast gallery, workshop and arts complex.
Five minutes’ walk away is a second titanic overground bunker, built as a depot to store four billion litres of fuel to supply the submarine base. Its six-metre-thick concrete walls now house 650 barrels of whisky for Bordeaux’s Moon Harbour distillery. The company’s marketing manager, Aude Medina, is delighted that the Bassins are open and is optimistic about life after lockdown. “We had no whisky production or public visits for two months, but I think people will begin to come out slowly, though staying closer to home, so we will attract more visitors from our local region.”
As confinement measures are eased, the docklands’ Musée Mer Marine is now open at weekends, Les Halles de Bacalan gastronomic market is open mornings from Wednesday to Sunday, and the city’s spectacular wine centre, La Cité du Vin reopens on 19 June.
Gustav Klimt, d’or et de couleurs and Paul Klee, peindre la musique runs until 3 January 2021. Open daily April-September: 10am-7pm (Mon-Thurs and Sun), 10am-9pm (Fri and Sat). October-March: 10am-6pm (Mon-Thurs and Sun), 10am-7pm (Fri and Sat). Tickets: adult €13.50, 5-25 years €9, senior €12.50, family €40
