DAU Paris 2019: unique and immersive project by Ilya Khrzhanovsky

DAU, the not-to-be-missed artistic and cultural event at the start of the year, lands at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Théâtre de La Ville and Centre Pompidou from Thursday January 24 to Sunday February 17, 2019, and promises to give Parisians a more than ambitious and totally new experience right in the heart of the capital....

You couldn't miss these DAU posters in the metro... DAU Paris is a large-scale artistic and cultural project initiated by Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky. To better understand this project, inspired by the life of Soviet theorist Lev Landau(Dau to his friends), winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1962, we need to go back in time. Between 2009 and 2011, 400 people agreed to take part in an extraordinary experience: they were cut off from their everyday lives to join an Institute of Quantum Physics built in Kharkov , Ukraine, and relive three decades (from 1938 to 1968) of the Soviet era.

It's important to point out that the participants, non-professionals from different backgrounds, played their own jobs. So there were scientists, artists, philosophers, Orthodox priests, shamans, waiters, sweepers, postal workers, secret police... And to create this organization, 12,000 square meters of set were built and then destroyed, 10,000 extras were hired and 400 leading roles were chosen after 392,000 auditions were held. Part fiction, part documentary, part dream, part reality, the DAU project tells the stories of the human species: love and sex, violence and betrayal... all set against the backdrop of the USSR and scientific research.

Following this experiment, 700 hours of 35 mm film were shot, giving rise to 13 feature-length films.

Today, DAU invites Parisians to immerse themselves in the Soviet era through a totally new experience , at the crossroads of several disciplines. Offering much more than contemporary art, cinema, music and theater, the DAU project should be seen as a mirror that raises a host of fundamental questions about existence and the human condition.

In our beloved capital, the event can be discovered from Thursday January 24 to Sunday February 17, 2019 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Théâtre de la Ville and the Centre Pompidou. For the occasion, the two theaters, currently under construction, are transformed into a zone of experimentation and exploration with human mannequins, beds set up in several nooks and crannies and projection rooms.

In addition to showing DAU feature films depicting scenes from life and stories at the Institute itself, the project features immersive installations, meeting spaces with wise men, performances, lectures on theology, quantum physics or geopolitics, walks through a place inhabited by an original musical creation... all in a constantly changing setting. The experience is designed to be multi-sensory. You can even eat at the"Shitty Hole", the project's canteen!

For an even more immersive experience, each visitor's experience is different, tailored to as many personalities and opinions as you wish to share.

At Beaubourg, a Soviet apartment reconstituted for the occasion welcomes internationally renowned physicists who lived in the Institute of Physics in Ukraine. The public is invited to observe them through seven one-way windows.

From dusk to dawn, these three sites are linked in the sky by the Red Triangle, a light sculpture inspired by the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century.

A number of celebrities have also agreed to take part in this collaborative project. Isabelle Huppert, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, Hannah Schygulla, Isabelle Adjani, Iris Berben, Gérard Depardieu, Lars Eidinger, Fanny Ardant and Barbara Sukowa all contributed to the DAU voice-over.

And to enter the world of DAU, it's essential to obtain a6-month, 24-hour or unlimited visa at the Visa Cernter on Place du Châtelet. In the latter two cases,"your trip will be personalized according to a psychometric test you fill in when you register". To be discovered 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, the DAU experience is closed to electronic devices. Lockers are available at the entrance for this purpose.

A veritable cultural UFO in perpetual evolution, DAU is so ambitious and disconcerting that it's hard to sum it up. It's a project that the public - as visitor, voyeur and actor - is called upon to bring to life and constantly evolve. We can only advise you to stay for several hours to fully immerse yourself in the project and really experience it.

So, are you ready for the DAU Paris experience?