The artistic director Barbara Butch, a figure widely criticized for her participation in the controversial opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, is once again at the center of a cultural proposal marked by an “immersive” aesthetic and the symbolic reinterpretation of the religious.
According to Tribune Chrétienne, the 2026 edition of Paris’s Nuit Blanche, scheduled for June 6 and 7, will include artistic and sound installations inside several Parisian temples under Butch’s direction, whose image became associated with the scene inspired by the Last Supper that provoked outrage during the Olympic Games.
The initiative contemplates transforming historic churches in Paris into spaces for sensory and “participatory” experiences, in a line that also reopens the debate on the use of sacred places for cultural spectacles far removed from their religious purpose.
A church turned into a sound installation
One of the most striking examples will be Saint-Laurent church, in Paris’s 10th district, where an experience titled Sous la peau du ciel (“Under the skin of the sky”) will be installed.
According to the official presentation cited by the French media, visitors will be able to participate by leaving telephone messages with their “wishes,” subsequently mixed with atmospheric sounds and digital treatments intended to create a “live and changing sonic matter.”
The project speaks of a supposed “invisible membrane between human hearts and the atmosphere” and promises to “repair the world through sound between earth and sky.”
This type of proposal reflects the growing trend between the sacred and the cultural spectacle, as well as the use of churches as mere stages for emotional or pseudo-spiritual experiences detached from Christian worship.