FESTIVAL LES CULTURELLES
8-15 October 2026
EPFL Campus
Launched in 2022, Les Culturelles returns with a new edition exploring, through the lens of the arts and the humanities, some of the key questions shaping our world. For one week, the campus will come alive with dance, performance, film screenings, contemporary art, music, and public conversationsdesigned to spark reflection, emotion, and dialogue.
On the occasion of our exhibition Do Robots Dream of Construction Sites?, the Culture Department (VPI) and Archizoom invites you to discover NO/NC (Normally Open, Normally Closed), an interactive installation by AATB – Practice for Non-Industrial Robotics, in which the walls around us move as they watch us.
PROGRAMMATION
Tuesday 13 October 2026
5.30pm – Guided tour of the exhibition
7pm – Solo concert by Julian Sartorius for the opening of NO/NC (Normally Open, Normally Closed) installation, by the artists AATB
From 14 to 24 October – Continuous interactive robotic installation
An event supported and organized with Usinesonore,
Pôle Culture (VPI)
The one who controls and decides who and where to build walls, decides and dictates how we form a cohesive society, one cemented by fictitious walls, but it also fractures and dissolves undesired ones. The wall is a gatekeeper, itself neutral, and interface between 2 opposites, like a magnet, itself unable to exist without its polar opposites. Cracks, faults, dislocations and fractures in walls, leaks, are then the permeable possibles that make these walls faillible. Walls are becoming a blur, their form, shape and making almost unrecognizable. They still divide, but are almost phantomatic, they are constantly changing, moving. It’s almost like walls today have a mind of their own, their own agency, their own logic and survival instinct.
NO/NC is a new work by AATB that proposes a swarm of inflatable stockades, autonomously moving in space to form temporary structures, barricades, blocking visitors from passing through and navigating space freely. They constantly shift and reconfigure, unpredictably, forcing constant warriness and attention. As the viewer stands still, it might get trapped. The only way out is to never stop moving.
ABOUT AATB
AATB – Andrea Anner and Thibault Brevet – is an artist duo investigating human-machine interactions through robotics and industrial automation beyond factory settings. Their practice integrates software programming, electronics, mechanical engineering, and precision machining to critically explore how robotics enters everyday life.
Their work has been exhibited at ZKM (Karlsruhe), V&A Dundee, Ars Electronica (Linz), Chengdu Biennale, New Museum (New York), Venice Architecture Biennale, Zollverein (Essen), Unfold X (Seoul), APS Museum (Shanghai), HEK (Basel), Istanbul Design Biennial, Milan Design Week, and Museum für Gestaltung (Zürich). They have held residencies at CERN and Atelier Luma (Arles) and received the Swiss Design Award in 2021. AATB has taught at most Swiss art and design universities (ZHDK, ECAL, HEAD, FHNW, HKB, SUPSI) and internationally.