Today was very hot and had to be treated like a rainy day. I had to find something to do indoors. I chose to go to the Musée des Confluences. Two trams were required.
The long-ish journey was immediately worth it when I saw the museum building. It reminded me of LUMA Arles.
Musee des Confluence architecture
The museum and area are named Confluence because they sit where the Rhône and Saône rivers merge. Designed by Austrian architects, the museum is described in a uniquely French way:
This “building landscape” has no main facade: it is a multi-faceted stainless steel structure, which hides its interior spaces and catches the shifting colours of the sky. The museum is a metaphor for constantly evolving knowledge, which it aims to share with all.
Its architectural design is highly functional and adaptable, in order to receive the general public, as well as to store and exhibit the collections. In addition to the base on which it stands, like a bridge on its piers, it is formed of two distinct elements. Bathed in light, the museum’s monumental hall, known as the “Crystal”, opens up to the city, welcoming it in. The “Cloud” is home to the permanent exhibition trail and temporary exhibitions.
The museum has several exhibitions, some permanent, others temporary. The themes don’t seem to be related.
Life and death
Death is not the end is a song on Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads album. It’s a sentiment shared by many civilisations throughout human history.
This permanent exhibition looks at life, in different cultures, from its origins to its death. The Egyptians, for example, when to great length to preserve the body because it would be required in the afterlife.
The way cultures see life and death are partly related to how they see time: cyclical or linear. Buddhists see death as a stage in the perpetual rebirths, which is broken if Nirvana is reached. Christianity, broadly, thinks of time as linear — there is a beginning and end state.
North Korea photos
One of the fascinating temporary exhibitions was on North Korea by photographer Stéphan Gladieu. He had wanted to go to North Korea for many years to capture people’s lives and culture. The authorities had always refused him. One day, someone he knew contacted him and put him in touch with the right people. So he got to take photos, which, he said, had touches of humour and irony.
The exhibition points out:
Between 2017 and 2020, he travelled to North Korea five times. Closely supervised and accompanied throughout his stays, he worked within strict constraints, yet carved out a space of creative freedom inside the framework imposed upon him.
Very little information emerges from what is often described as the world’s most closed dictatorship about the daily lives of its twenty-six million inhabitants. Here, the individual exists primarily as part of the collective. North Koreans are typically photographed in groups, as expressions of individuality are considered inappropriate.
By adopting a reflective portrait approach that echoes the visual language of propaganda, Stéphan Gladieu made his work intelligible to his North Korean subjects.
This series seeks to capture the individual within a society where the collective prevails and even the smallest behaviours are regulated, revealing the carefully staged nature of everyday life under the regime.
Coincidentally, I recently enjoyed a South Korean series on Netflix (Agent Kim Reactivated) and read a novel (Flashlight by Susan Choi) which both have fascinating, but not flattering, takes on North Korea.
Zombies
The final exhibition, also temporary, was on zombies. I’ve seen maybe one or two zombie movies in my life. There’s one I want to see (The Last Train to Busan) because a friend told me about it when I was on my way to Busan in South Korea! By coincidence, the French poster for the film was on display.
The word “zombie”, apparently, was originally used in West Africa. Zombie (nzambi) referred to a spirit or ghost of a dead person, often a child. As a result of the Atlantic slave trade, the word travelled abroad and morphed into something else when it came into contact with Catholicism.
In the home of zombies, Haiti, the word refers to someone who has committed serious crimes and is then brought before a secret society, which dispenses justice using magic. In combination with normal law, those who continually re-offend are condemned to zombification.
The word can also refer to social outcasts, people with a mental illness who believe they have been zombified.
I don’t know how zombies became the focus of a whole genre of films!
When growing up, we used the word “voodoo” to mean some kind of strange magic. Now more accurately spelt “Vodou”, it is a Haitian religion. The religion has many divinities and spirits. The exhibition also had a reproduction of a Vodou temple.
After leaving the museum, I walked a bit instead of getting the tram straight away. I passed some interesting buildings. Yesterday, I saw the James Joyce pub and today I saw a British themed pub: Peaky Blinders Tavern!
I ended up in a shopping mall and had coffee before beginning the journey back to my apartment.
