Design exhibitions typically treat objects as autonomous entities, isolated under gallery lighting where silence amplifies visual contemplation. CONTRIBUTIONS Festival’s second edition, the nonprofit organization founded by design consultants Anna Caradeuc and Élise Daunay, fundamentally challenges this premise by treating sound not as background atmosphere but as structural element – a layer of meaning that transforms how we perceive material culture. The decision to commission musicians to respond directly to exhibited works creates a dynamic where acoustic and physical forms become mutually constitutive rather than hierarchically arranged.
The most compelling manifestation of this approach appears in Emily Thurman’s bell-adorned furniture. Her Mother’s Love Rocking Chair and Cheer Up, for You Are So Young Rocking Stool function simultaneously as sculptural objects and instruments. The bells – some sourced globally, others sculpted by Thurman herself and strung by Paris-based jeweler Zoé Mohm – create a constellation that activates through use rather than remaining static ornamentation. Kevin Morby’s wandering soundtrack incorporates these resonant tones, establishing a feedback loop where the furniture’s sonic properties inform the composed music, which in turn recontextualizes how visitors approach the physical forms.
Thurman’s broader Hundō collection draws its name from proto-Italic etymology – foundry, meaning to pour out – a reference that connects bronze casting techniques to concepts of devotional practice. The collection thus operates across multiple temporal registers, linking ancient metalworking traditions to contemporary craft revival while the accompanying soundscape adds yet another layer of historical reference through Morby’s musical vocabulary.
The pairing of Normandy-based Pauline Esparon’s translucent parchment works with Juliette Teste’s ceramic sculptures. Esparon’s Dabgar series employs centuries-old Pakistani parchment-making traditions, creating surfaces that mediate light with organic irregularity. Positioned against Teste’s ceramics within Michelle Blades’s ethereal soundscape, the installation creates conditions where ancient craft techniques converse with contemporary sculptural practice across both visually and acoustically.
Nifemi Marcus-Bello’s M2 Shelf with integrated La Boîte concept speaker recalls living room furniture from the designer’s Lagos childhood, transforming nostalgia into formal investigation. Paired with Thomas Morineau Barthelemy’s seating and Rodrigo Amarante’s evolving Brazilian soundtrack, the installation constructs a listening room that treats domestic furniture as vehicle for cultural transmission.
The fourth installation, curated by emerging Parisian dealer Adrien Jaïs, brings together Sylvia Corrette’s 1989 Roxanne, Princesse des Djinns series with Luna Paiva’s Aura drawings and Valerie Name Bolaño’s Scavo at Midnight pendant lights within a scenographic framework by Jeanne Tresvaux du Fraval. Corrette’s series, created when French design was negotiating between postmodern expressionism and renewed craft traditions, carries a narrative quality suggested by its reference to mythological spirits.
The festival’s fifth presentation – Andrea Laszlo De Simone’s audiovisual piece Una Lunghissima Ombra alongside Harold Mollet’s curation of Metals Milano’s 1994 Bar Metals collection – synthesizes the festival’s broader ambitions. By recreating an Italian bar atmosphere upstairs while De Simone’s work unfolds elsewhere, the installation demonstrates how design and music together construct cultural memory and social ritual.
To learn more about CONTRIBUTIONS Festival #2, visit contributions.design.
Photography by DePasquale Maffini, Kate Devine, Pauline Chardin, and Alexandre Onimus.