Seeing Song, A Sonic Portrait of Video Art

A Panorama of Music Video Artistry, at once exhilarating and provocative. 

The 1980s heralded the dawn of the web and the ascent of the music video, which supplanted the 16mm reels of that unruly invention: the Scopitone, a jukebox for the eyes. As the music industry’s burgeoning visual system, the music video established itself as one of the most hybrid and laconic forms of media expression. Later, the invention of the GIF in the 1990s arrived to tackle the sonic intensity of Raves and Free Parties. For his part, the film critic Serge Daney once likened the music video to « someone leading you through a series of shortcuts, without daring to admit that, in any case, they do not know the true path. »

Seeing Song, A Sonic Portrait of Video Art explores the convergences between musical creation, song, experimental cinema, choreographic performance, photography, and various other forms of worldly exaltation—spanning the television screen to the digital realms of Web 3.0. It is a visual odyssey where the music video and vidéomusique become a playground for subverting the short-format, transforming it into a laboratory for radical experimentation. Through creative collisions, this landmark exhibition traces the evolution of a genre that has seamlessly absorbed every technological revolution. « The Singing Body » becomes a narrative celebrating the electric encounter between pop icons and the finest visual artists, sweeping aside the ambiguity between auteur cinema and the commercial film.

The setting is no less exhilarating: the rooms of the Hôtel WindsoR—œuvres totales crafted by artists since the late 1980s—each host a jubilant episode of this music video mythology. An absolute immersion into the heart of a heterodox genre. Prepare for a sensory explosion: music is something to be heard and danced to; at OVNi, it is all that and, more importantly, something to be beheld.

Note :

1. The emergence of the Cameca Scopitone in France in 1961 was preceded in the 1940s by the Panoram in Chicago, followed by the Italian Cinebox Scopizione, which debuted at the 1959 Milan Trade Fair.
2. A premier exhibition of the RAVERSE collection by Chac MacGill at the 2022 OVNi Festival, Grande Halle, 109-Pôle de Cultures Contemporaines, Nice.
3. The exhibition Les Immatériaux, Centre Pompidou, 1985; the section entitled ‘The Singing Body’, curated by Jean-Paul Fargier and Christophe Bargues, marked the music video’s first appearance within a major French institution.

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To discover the Biennale 2026 Soundtrack: 

Join us during the OVNI Hotels Weekend,

from 27th to 29th November 2026.

Hôtel WindsoR: 

Seeing Song, A Sonic Portrait of Video Art 27th November: 

Opening from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm