Theresa Baumgartner Makes Space for Sound at Festival d’Automne

From the Grand Palais to Saint-Eustache and Espace Niemeyer, Theresa Baumgartner is developing site-specific light interventions for this year’s Festival d’Automne in Paris. Each project responds to a different architectural setting, drawing on its history, character and relationship to the music being performed.

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..

For Baumgartner, the architecture of a space is never simply a backdrop. Its history, proportions and original function become part of the artistic process. Her interventions explore how light can change not only the perception of a place, but also the relationship between the music, the performers and those experiencing it.

At Église Saint-Eustache, she is developing a participatory light intervention in which the audience becomes part of the work itself. Equipped with handheld torches, visitors will help shape the visual experience, blurring the distinction between artwork and audience.

Rather than treating light as something added to a finished performance, Baumgartner approaches it as an independent artistic medium, developed in direct dialogue with sound and architecture.

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.