Le Générateur is a space for art and performance located on the edge of Paris’s 13th arrondissement.
Dedicated to performance and all forms of contemporary artistic expression, Le Générateur prioritizes singular artistic productions, as long as they are rooted in research and creation.
Halfway between a theater and an exhibition space, its 600 m² venue encourages intersections between performing arts and visual arts, and sparks unlikely frictions between disciplines, genres, audiences, and generations.
A site of (rapid) incubation and (highly neutral) catalysis, Le Générateur opens itself to all intensities and brings together artists and audiences around performance.
Founded in 2006, Le Générateur was co-founded by painter Bernard Bousquet and choreographer Anne Dreyfus, who has served as its artistic director ever since.
Geographic Position / Artistic Position
From its opening in 2006, Le Générateur has focused its programming on performance, positioning itself at the crossroads of performing and visual arts. Given its past as a cinema, it could be described as a space for art(s) and experiment(s). Its main mission is to restore to artists a margin of freedom that encourages them to reconnect with the experimental dimension of their work. Located in Gentilly, and therefore removed from a certain Parisian microcosm, Le Générateur invites distance and reflection by offering a sounding board for cross-disciplinary practices. It privileges the creative process over the cultural product.
Physical Space / Empty Space
With its raw and minimalist architectural approach, Le Générateur offers a volume suited to all formats of work, from ephemeral gestures to expansive installations. By confronting the artist with an empty space, it becomes a recording surface for even the smallest gestures and movements, testing the artist’s capacity for resistance by pushing them to exceed their limits and constantly reinvent themselves.
Collective Experience / Intimate Experience
Through its ability to host often risky artistic practices, Le Générateur embraces its role as a pioneer and occupies a singular place in today’s contemporary creation landscape. Conceived and inhabited by artists, it is a space of freedom that performance art demands. While collective experience lies at the heart of its functioning, it also leaves room for the artist’s intimate experience.
Creation Time / Exhibition Time
The team at Le Générateur is attentive to every stage of the creative process. Through its residency program, to which it dedicates 30 weeks per year, it provides artists with the space and time necessary for the maturation of their work, mobilizing both technical and human resources. Each autumn, Le Générateur comes alive with FRASQ, a performance gathering, an opportunity to showcase current developments in performance art, giving emerging artists a chance while placing them in dialogue with more established figures. A highlight of its programming, FRASQ in no way overshadows the actions carried out throughout the year for all audiences. Le Générateur is thus characterized by a spirit of exploration, presenting original creations each season rather than ready-made productions. In this way, it fulfills its mission of public interest by welcoming artists often situated on the margins of the system.
A History of Encounters / A History of Transmission
Above all, Le Générateur is a place of encounter and artistic companionship. It allows artists to recognize one another and engage with heterogeneous practices, united by a shared commitment to performance. It is sufficiently embodied to attract artists of all kinds and generations, who continually question their practice and regenerate themselves through contact with radical otherness. The idea of transmission is therefore central to its identity.
Generator of Energy / Generator of Poetry
By making performance its driving force, Le Générateur has chosen to serve cross-disciplinary, even transgressive artistic practices. For the past eighteen years, in collaboration with an ever-growing number of artists, it has responded to the need to constantly redefine the meaning of the word “performance”: art on the edge of life, life on the edge of art. From this fertile tension, Le Générateur—as a living organism—draws its strength and energy.