From 12 to 20 May 2025
CULTURAL WEEK, SPRING 2025
In this edition, dance will be linked, during two separate events, to mathematics and engineering. Music will be featured in a prestigious concert linked to the Musica ex machina exhibition, in a film concert with a pianist and a cellist, and in a highly original sound performance created with vacuum cleaners. An artistic ritual will be performed on a sculpture during a guided visit of the fixed artworks on campus. We will discuss AI in the context of literary creation and, finally, an exhibition and a performance will explore our sensory experiences of well-being and pain.
The objective of the Les Culturelles projects is to strengthen relationships and foster specific, albeit fleeting, sociability. By introducing elements of the unexpected, their purpose is to inject the unknown into the familiar and thus impact the daily life of the EPFL community. Our projects are original and custom-made for our School and aspire to stir body and mind and open up space for the imagination.
Free admission to all events (some with registration)
Program:
DĂNCITY
12h00 | Hall SG
Performance and exhibition
DĂNCITY is a stage performance created by some forty students during a residency in April 2025 at SĂ©velin 36 in Lausanne. In addition to the performance, an exhibition of photos, videos and drawings created by EPFL students is presented as traces of the creative process.
> Free access
Fixed works of art on campus
12h00 | DĂ©part de l’Esplanade
Guided tour and artistic ritual
During a guided tour led by VĂ©ronique Mauron Layaz, art historian and head of CDH-Culture, discover the more than twenty works of art that make up a veritable art park on campus. At the end of the tour, artist Etienne KrĂ€henbĂŒhl invites you to a few minutes’ ritual on the Bing Bang sculpture at the entrance to EPFL Pavilions A.
> Registration closed
Is AI transforming the art of storytelling?
12h15 | Rolex Learning Center
Discussion-debate L’heure H
The use of AI is becoming commonplace, including in literature and screenwriting. What are the advantages? And what limits? How are these uses changing the relationship to writing, not only for authors but also for readers and viewers? What does the future hold for the art of imagining and telling stories in collaboration with these technologies?
> Free admission (registration closed for the sandwiches)
Be Fluid
18h30 | EPFL Pavilions A
Performance on 14 May / exhibition from 14 to 16 May
Swiss artist Luc Mattenberger has developed works that trigger hypnotic states and explore the sensory links between man and machine. Discover a series of his sculptures in the Be Fluid exhibition and performance.
> Free access
Ciné-concert
18h00 | Foyer SG
Avec Prof. Martin Rohrmeier (piano) et Ivan Turkalj (violoncelle)
CinĂ©-concert with two silent films: Luis Buñuel’s Un chien andalou (1929), co-created with Salvador DalĂ, and Samuel Beckett’s Film (1965), starring none other than Buster Keaton. The films are set to live music by Ivan Turkalj (cello) and Prof. Martin Rohrmeier (piano). The event will conclude with an improvisation by the two musicians.
> Free access
Les agents, les agentes
10h – 12h – 17h – 20h | Rolex Learning Center
Performance and concerts
To complement the La Rampe installation, artist Delphine Reist has teamed up with musician Anthony Laguerre to offer concerts with vacuum cleaners at four different times of the day. A sound dissection is produced, a sort of inner song of the vacuum cleaners, to be listened to through headphones.
> Free access
Bi-tĂ
12h00 | EPFL Pavilions, pavillon A
Dance
This choreography by Ticinese dancer Bianca Berger is a fusion of two worlds that everything opposes: mathematics and contemporary dance. The body becomes a function, gestures become numbers and events become sets.
> Upon registration (lunch offered)
Kit Armstrong, algorithmic music through the centuries
19h30 | Forum Rolex
Soft drinks available from 5:30 pm
Lightning tour of the Musica ex Machina exhibition between 5:30 pm and 7 pm
EPFL Pavilions presents an exceptional concert between mathematics, music and computational thinking, given by American-Taiwanese pianist, composer and improviser Kit Armstrong.
Organisation: CDH-Culture
Contact: VĂ©ronique Mauron Layaz