Champ libre exceptional to Matthieu Mailhé and his (re)creation of Pink Floyd's The Wall
7:00 PM > Reception & dinner
9:00 PM > “The Wall: Piano and Voice”
Based on the work by Pink Floyd
Concept and performance: Matthieu Mailhé
Piano: Philippe Gelda
Residency at the Arène CCC and preview performance.
Piano-Voice – Object Theater – Live Video / For ages 10 and up / Running time: 1 hour
Forty-six years after its creation, “The Wall” resonates with a haunting intensity, as Roger Waters denounced the walls of alienation: school, war, fame… In 2025, we are living in an era of new walls: algorithmic bubbles, addictive screens, social media, generative AI.
This performance strips the cathedral-like work of its rock arsenal to reveal its heart-wrenching intimacy. A piano, a voice, children’s toys filmed live on a smartphone and projected on a monumental scale. The piano lid becomes a miniature children’s room where Pink’s inner drama unfolds…
The smartphone, a poetic tool for capturing moments, gradually reveals its true nature: an invisible wall between us and real life. From empty video conferences to compulsive doomscrolling, from deepfakes of tech oligarchs to dehumanizing memes, Pink navigates contemporary digital hell.
Until the radical gesture: a single word—STOP. The screen goes dark… The show continues without digital support. Just the piano, the voice, the objects. Reality reclaims its place. The wall falls.
The Wall in 2025 is not a nostalgic concert. It is an act of intimate and political resistance against all the walls that continue to rise—including the invisible ones we carry in our pockets.
