The Art Newspaper reported on July 8 that Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective have unveiled their most ambitious collaboration to date in an immersive installation at Luma Arles in southern France. The exhibition titled Correspondences brings together eight films produced between 2023 and 2026 along with two new commissions specifically created for the venue and focused on the Camargue wetland. It further incorporates Smith’s drawings photographs handwritten texts and archival displays produced for the occasion while the entire presentation marks the first major European showing of the evolving project.
Soundwalk Collective led by Stephan Crasneanscki with producer Simone Merli first began working with the punk poet and performer Patti Smith more than a decade ago according to an announcement on the Luma Arles website. The project blends field recordings moving images and poetry to examine landscapes as both physical spaces and mental archives shaped by artistic creation scientific inquiry political struggle and environmental vulnerability. Locations featured across the films range from Chernobyl and Greenland to the Black Sea Siberia and the Camargue invoking figures including Pier Paolo Pasolini Medea Alfred Wegener Peter Kropotkin and Andrei Rublev.
Films are displayed on large intersecting screens arranged in the centre of the exhibition space with pairs projected simultaneously to share soundtracks and generate new resonances and associations a July review in The Art Newspaper detailed. Among the pairings are Children of Chernobyl with The Acolyte the Artist and Nature Medea with Pasolini and Burning 1946-2024 with Mass Extinction 1946-2024. One of the new commissions Le Mistral interweaves underwater footage of ancient Roman shipwrecks from the first and second centuries CE discovered in the Rhône River and Mediterranean with contemporary images of the Camargue to highlight themes of submerged histories and ecological transformation.
The installation occupies La Grande Halle a 5000-square-metre former railway engineering workshop built in 1894 that now forms a cornerstone of the Luma Arles campus Luma Arles documentation states. The building stands on the site of the Alyscamps one of the ancient Roman world’s most renowned necropolises and this historical layering echoes the exhibition’s focus on survival memory and disappearance. Smith has characterised her new drawings and photographic works as interpretations of ghost images adding a layer of personal reflection to the collective endeavour.
Live performances tied to the opening took place on July 5 and 6 with Smith Crasneanscki Merli and additional collaborators including cellist Lucy Railton and visual artist Pedro Maia according to the Luma Arles events calendar. These events merged poetry sound field recordings and live visuals into experiences that blurred distinctions between concert installation and cinematic presentation. The performances emphasised sound as a carrier of memory while heightening awareness of fragile natural and cultural legacies.
Earlier iterations of the collaboration received more intimate presentations in New York and Santiago de Chile before this European debut a Luma Arles overview noted. The exhibition encourages visitors to chart individual paths through the surrounding imagery and narratives fostering personal connections rather than imposing linear storytelling. Correspondences remains open at La Grande Halle until November 8 allowing extended engagement with the project’s meditative approach to a world marked by loss and persistence.
