Conference

La Centrale, Thursday, October 9, 2025 at 8:30 p.m.

Reservations at the ticket office

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Music and friendship go hand in hand: it's often between friends that we decide to make music one day. And it's not uncommon to make music as a family, as a couple, or between parents and children.

The exhibition of this friendship, and a fortiori the depiction of family ties or family ties between artists or musicians, nevertheless remains a blind spot in the visual language that relates to it, for the obvious reason that the representation of these feelings and affective ties would contribute nothing to the knowledge of the work, in that it would in no way be constitutive of the artistic process, which is essentially individual, attached to the personality and figure of its author. The work of art thus comes to exist through its mechanical reproduction (the figure of the author being relegated to the sidelines). A musical work, on the other hand, would find in the photographic representation of its performer or composer a form of compromise, if not resolution, since by definition there would be nothing to hear within an image.

But what happens when we come up against this construction, when we decide to transgress this code, and the very representation of what underpins a friendship or family ties begins to participate in the visual expression of a musical work? And what happens when we begin to make art not only among friends, but also as friends, when making art is first and foremost a gesture of friendship?

These are the questions I'd like to address through a few examples drawn from the history of music. But I'll also draw on an exemplary case study: the photographic work of Catherine Ceresole.

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Maxime Guitton

Maxime Guitton, a music historian based in Marseille, is the associate curator of the 2nd edition of Biennale Son.

Active since 2003, he has produced over a hundred musical programs and collaborated with various institutions and independent venues. His interventions extend to art schools, art centers and prestigious museums. A former Villa Médicis resident (2017-2018), he is currently researching the archives of composer Alvin Curran. In charge of research and artistic programming at the Beaux-Arts de Marseille - INSEAMM since 2018, he also coordinated the Centre national des arts plastiques' creative support programs (2007-2017).