There was quite a lot of activity when I arrived at the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont. The work on display, by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, was primarily comprised of large-scale portraits containing foreign chiography (I assumed Persian). At the end of the gallery, stood a line of people who, I discovered, were all waiting to go upstairs to watch a video. Curiosity led me to join them, although I wasn't sure what we were going to see. I felt like one who arrives late to the cinema, to find the film has already started and sense must be made of what's been missed. By the staircase were some large black and white photos—images of protest. I noticed one of them featured pictures of the Shah, and presumed (wrongly) that they were archival photos.

We arrived in time to see the first of two videos shot in black and white and in one of the Iranian dialects (I don't know which); however, luckily for me, the subtitles were in English. The story unfolded—

That much made sense. After all, the film was meant to portray tha period in which there was an attempt to reinstate the Shah.

The music for both films was ambient, filled with dark tones, and I was impressed by it. Important to the first video was the image of a man and woman lying on the ground, filmed from above. Poetic words accompanied these images. The second video seemed to be about a marriage gone terribly wrong. Both film and score possessed a ghostlike quality. There were shots of remote landscapes...a house left to decay. A woman appeared to be drifting along, a lost spirit, burdened by some terrible memory. She kept referring to a dress she intended to wear to a wedding. Towards the end of the video, we saw her being pinned down by a group of men and, perhaps, violated; it was left to the imagination. We were asked to fill in the blanks.

It suddenly dawned on me that the exhibition downstairs was, in fact, a collection of stills from the videos.

•••

Shirin Neshat, although born in Iran, doesn't quite know where to call home. Shirin Neshat is displaced. The 43-year-old artist moved to the U.S., after high school, to study art. In 1979, when the Islamic Revolution overtook her homeland, Neshat was exiled and couldn't go back until 11 years later, when the country to which she returned bore little resemblance to the one she'd left.

Neshat reflects her sense of displacement by trying to untangle the ideology of Islam through art. Her giant-sized photographic images are beautifully produced, and her videos have a truly great quality.

It could best be described as a vast, manipulated...um...an artistic...universe? Or, maybe, a colossal organism, which...No. It could best be described as an interactive...

OK. A person in a console is able to control myriad incidents within a given space of, oh, 4000 square meters (around 43,000 square feet). Lights...music...all at the flip of a switch. Walking along the ramp-ways in said space, one can't help but think of filmic settings of synthetic worlds—The Truman Show...the 60s cult TV program known as "The Prisoner ". This is exactly what I felt strolling about the bizarre set of installations at the Palais de Tokyo, for the vernissage of Cellar Door. A buzz of expectancy usually reserved for for hot stadium bands or big sporting events filled the place. The crowd was large and impatiently waiting for a security guard to let us into the strange world erected in the whopping gallery, which frequently embraces conceptual art. When finally allowed in, there was a tremendous rush...shoppers on the first day of a major sale. Music boomed and ricocheted off of walls. I ambled through a construct of neon-lights, which made for pleasant viewing, but maybe it was more of a sweetener. I came upon the control room, with its array of gadgetry, mixers, and computer equipment, then entered the, perhaps, most surprising feature of the exhibition: men (I believed) wearing pseudo-modern military outfits. They were engaged in some sort of battle, in an enclosed area devised of netting.

There was a kind of mise en scène—slabs the warriors could hide behind—as they attempted to hit one another with pellets. It was quite unnerving. (I've never had the urge to play paintball, or even military computer games, except for those in which space ships and asteroids are obliterated.) From that live interactive art, I headed into a more sedate zone consisting of obviously synthetic trees and dominated by a glowing red ball. It felt as though I was meandering through a park or small woodland area, at dusk.


Thunderous music seduced me upstairs to a free bar, where cocktails were being freely distributed. An Asiatic woman, Djing—she of flowing black hair and patterned dress—was playing popular classics (think Elton John). There seemed to be no connection, whatsoever, with what was happening below. I desperately needed the refreshment, and was accommodated by a libation called "Gloss". Gloss went down well. The crowd was young, beautifully attired, artistically chic. I went back down to Loris Gréaud's invention.

I should note the French artist behind my recent adventure, is under thirty...his ideas—vigorous, fresh, and fantastical. It's evidence of the Palais de Tokyo’s commitment to emerging artistic creation in France, and to Gréaud, who, if nothing else is a grand thinking risk taker. At one point, on one wall, letters made from parcel tape spelled out "WE ARE ALIVE", or some such slogan. Some things made sense, others lnot so much. One smaller space looked like it it could have been the habitat of a sea monster. I even asked a passerby if it held a live animal.

Final assessment? I liked the atmosphere, but was less than convinced by the art.