A friendly coffee with Boris Charmatz

A conversation between the featured artist of this 78th edition and Elizabeth Diller and Emma Bigé and Patrick Boucheron to explore the parallels between art, philosophy, and architecture. 

Elizabeth Diller, founder of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is a renowned architect, winner of the Genius Grant and recently honored by the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. A professor of architecture at Princeton, she has transformed New York with projects such as Lincoln Center, the High Line, the Museum of Modern Art and The Shed. In Europe, she designed Zaryadye Park in Moscow and is working on projects in Madrid and Milan. She has collaborated with cultural institutions worldwide and created installations for prestigious museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Fondation Cartier.

Emma Bigé studies, writes, translates and improvises between the fields of dance studies, queer studies and environmental inhumanities. Agrégée, PhD in philosophy, dancer and curator, she teaches epistemology in art schools. Author of Mouvementments. Écopolitiques de la danse (La Découverte, 2023), she is currently working on a book with historian Clovis Maillet, Poules transgenres, parentés plastiques et autres histoires transécologiques (Les liens qui libèrent, 2025). The rest of the time, she lives on the edge of a forest and, whenever she can, she rolls on the ground.

After studying at the conservatoire de Grenoble and at the school of the opéra de Paris, then at the conservatoire supérieur de Lyon, Boris Charmatz became a vital performer and emerged in 1993 as a major figure in French contemporary dance with A bras le Corps, a duo created with Dimitri Chamblas. From 2009 to 2018 he was director of the CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne, which he transformed into a Dance museum, an experimental space to rethink the relationship between the public and the territories of art. Since then, he has ceaselessly been questioning the foundations of his discipline with his company Terrain, with the aim of making dance a space of liberty. In 2022, Boris Charmatz became director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal to develop, with Terrain, a new project between Germany and France. 

Patrick Boucheron is a historian and professor at the Collège de France, where he holds the History of Powers in Western Europe, 13th-16th centuries Chair. His most recent lectures have focused on political fictions, forms of experience in the Middle Ages, and the history of the Black Death. He is also producer of the "Histoire de" program on France Inter, director of the "L'Univers historique" collection published by Editions du Seuil, and associate artist at the TNB in Rennes, where he presents the annual "Rencontrer l'histoire" cycle. In theater, he is also co-author, with Mohamed El Khatib, of Boule à neige, in which he has been performing since 2020.

With Boris Charmatz, associate artist of the 78th edition, Elizabeth Diller architect, Emma Bigé philosopher and dancer, Patrick Boucheron, historian and professor at the Collège de France.