Paris: music boxes placed throughout the city

Serge Gainsbourg, Joséphine Baker or even Edith Piaf… From now on, you will be able to listen to titles by these legendary artists all over Paris. All thanks to “Music Boxes”.

At the initiative of the project: jerome Sallenave and Karim Hamida, with their artist network The nuclear Nation. These two Parisian artists have installed 250 music boxes all over Paris since January 2020, as reported by our colleagues from France 3 Regions. “Our idea is to put music in the street, explains Jérôme Sallenave. We wanted to telescope painting and urban music, with sound objects. Our first music collages in the street date back to 2018, with scores, vinyls…»

soften the harshness of the capital

The installation, participative, is very simple: to listen to the titles, you just have to turn the small crank. “That it seemed natural to us to stick them in the street to offer them to passers-by. Our goal is also to light up the streets and people’s hearts with our sound fireflies. The city is an environment that we love, but it is a place that can also be hard, where you vies happy times and more difficult», adds the artist.

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Two different sound axes have been chosen: the artists offer personal compositions and also pay tribute to important musicians for them. In total, around fifteen different box models have been imagined. «On also pays tribute to deceased personalities, from the generation of our parents or grandparents, and who remain attached to our childhood, notes the artist. Music boxes are very much related to childhood.»

Beyond France, 150 collages were made outside the capital, in Switzerland, Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands. Sadly, 80% installations are stolen or destroyed…

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