La Traversée du CentQuatre Paris

The CENT QUATRE is one of the flagship projects of the cultural policy initiated at the beginning of the mandate by Bertrand Delanoë, Mayor of Paris, and Christophe Girard, Deputy Mayor in charge of Culture.
The CENT QUATRE is an artistic establishment of the City of Paris dedicated to production and creation. Versatile, responsive, lively, open to all, a place for dialogue, meeting and discovery, combining monumental architecture with highly modern interior spaces, the CENT QUATRE represents an innovative adventure. This project will allow the public to develop a new perspective on today’s arts. The CENT QUATRE will be a new passageway open in 2008 every day from 7 am to 10 pm.
Located at the junction between 104 rue d’Aubervilliers and 5 rue Curial (19th arrondissement) on the site of the former Municipal Funeral Home, a historic property of the City of Paris, the CENT QUATRE is exceptional both for the cultural, architectural and urban challenge it represents and for the remarkable potential it holds.
The City of Paris has the ambition to create, on nearly 35,000 m2, a place of living culture of the 21st century, corresponding to a new generation of artistic and cultural facilities for which the dialogue between art, cultural practices and territories must be permanent.
Directed by two artists, Robert Cantarella and Frédéric Fisbach, the CENT QUATRE is a place for artists; everything is designed to facilitate their work and its production. These directors exchange with other artists in residence and invent new relationships between their practices and Parisians, notably by presenting works in progress in one of the available spaces. The CENT QUATRE has sixteen workshops, a 400-seat hall, a 200-seat hall, and two halls each with a capacity of 3,000 people. But the works of art can take over the numerous spaces of the CENT QUATRE, which lends itself to all imaginations.
The CENT QUATRE is an open space. The visual arts, music, dance, theater, video, fashion, design, cinema, literature will find their place there permanently, in the form of residencies, exhibitions and festivals… The CENT QUATRE will spark conversations between all disciplines, affirming the singularity of each. Artists from all over the world, whether they are still unknown or of international renown, will find here the tools and space necessary for their practices and the elaboration of their works. The most original ideas, the most innovative projects can be born at the CENT QUATRE.
Events and commercial activities come together. They will make a significant contribution to forging links with the neighborhood, while also ensuring synergy with cultural activities in terms of circulation and exchange of audiences. As part of an urban renewal process that concerns northeastern Paris and the neighboring municipalities, the CENT QUATRE is located in a sector that is constantly changing, sociologically, culturally and economically. It participates in these changes and acts itself on them. It will also host local public facilities for amateur artistic practices, in particular in connection with the 19th arrondissement town hall, and early childhood education.