Theresa Baumgartner Makes Space for Sound at Festival d’Automne

From the Grand Palais to Saint-Eustache and Espace Niemeyer, Theresa Baumgartner is creating light interventions for five performances at this year’s Festival d’Automne in Paris. Between October and December, each project takes her into a distinctly different architectural setting, whose character and history provide the starting point for her work.

The series opened on 4 October with GORDE by Florentin Ginot and Katharina Ernst at Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord and continues with Rebecca Saunders’ Chroma I–XXIV at the Grand Palais, Klangforum Wien at Saint-Eustache, Brìghde Chaimbeul and Etienne Nillesen at Espace Niemeyer, and works by Cassandra Miller, Éliane Radigue and Sarah Davachi, performed by Quatuor Bozzini at Église du Saint-Esprit.

Baumgartner’s approach is highly site-specific. At Bouffes du Nord, the theatre’s patina and unusually tall, narrow stage informed a series of contrasting light tableaux: long vertical columns emphasised its height, while a low plane of light and haze worked against the proportions of the room.

The upcoming performances call for entirely different responses. At Saint-Eustache, Baumgartner is developing a participatory intervention using torches in the hands of the audience. At the Grand Palais, her visual concept follows a concert conceived as a parcours through the building, while Saint-Esprit brings her into an ecclesiastical setting. There is no single visual language carried from one production to the next; each takes shape in relation to its surroundings and the music being performed.

For Baumgartner, light is not simply added to a finished performance. She treats it as a spatial material, working in close relationship with sound and architecture to alter how an existing environment is perceived.

Trained in fine art at Berlin-Weißensee and Chelsea College of Arts in London, Baumgartner comes to stage and light from a background in visual art and sculpture. Her practice grew out of film, experimental music and audiovisual performance and today spans installation, performance and stage work.

In collaboration with visual artist Marcel Weber (MFO), she developed the visual scenography for Jlin’s Black Origami tour and for Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s live performances of the Stranger Things soundtrack. She later collaborated with Hildur Guðnadóttir, Chris Watson, Sam Slater and Francesco Donadello on the live presentation of the Chernobyl score, which received the 2020 OPUS KLASSIK for most innovative concert programme.

21 November 2026
Rebecca Saunders / Ensemble Intercontemporain
Chroma I–XXIV
Grand Palais, Paris

30 November 2026
Klangforum Wien
Église Saint-Eustache, Paris

11 December 2026
Brìghde Chaimbeul / Etienne Nillesen
Espace Niemeyer, Paris

12 December 2026
Florentin Ginot / Katharina Ernst
GORDE
Maison de la Musique de Nanterre

14 December 2026
Cassandra Miller / Éliane Radigue / Sarah Davachi / Quatuor Bozzini
Église du Saint-Esprit, Paris

Theresa Baumgartner is a Berlin-based visual artist working across audiovisual performance, installation and stage design. Trained in fine art at Berlin-Weißensee and Chelsea College of Arts in London, her practice is rooted in visual art and sculpture and has developed through long-standing collaborations with musicians, composers, choreographers and filmmakers. Her work has been presented internationally at institutions and festivals including the Barbican Centre, MONA, HKW Berlin, La Gaîté Lyrique, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, Unsound, CTM, Sydney Festival and Primavera.