Art historian, essayist and art critic, sound and intermedia producer/creator, Philippe Franck (BE/FR) is the artistic director and founder of Transcultures (since 1996). He is the founder and director of the international sound art festival City Sonic (since 2003) and Les Transnumériques, digital arts & cultural biennale (since 2005). Since 2018, he is the general director of the European Pepinieres of Creation (international network) and since 2021, member of the CiTu Paragraphe research team in Information and Communication Sciences and digital humanities at the University of Paris 8.
He has curated many sound/multimedia/interdisciplinary exhibitions, events and festivals in Belgium, France and abroad. He also teaches on digital arts at the At School of Saint-Luc (Brussels) and sound creation at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels and Arts2 (Mons).
He has produced or participated in numerous discs (on various labels including Sub Rosa, Optical Sound, Transonic), directed several collective works on contemporary / electronic music, interdisciplinary, digital and / or sound creation (notably at La Lettre Volée editions ) and writes regularly as a critic in several Belgian, French and Quebec journals.
In 2022, he began a doctoral thesis in Information and Communication Sciences (Cognition, language, interaction) at the University of Paris 8 (CiTu Paragrahe Team), under the dual supervision of Khaldoun Zreik (Paris8) and Marc Veyrat (University of Savoie Mont Blanc).
Artistic
At the same time, since the early 1980s, he has been developing a multifaceted artistic journey and has produced numerous choreographic music (for Nadine Ganase, Manon Oligny, etc.), interdisciplinary performances, videos (in particular for Régis Cotentin, Hanzel & Gretzel or Thomas Israël), multimedia projects (with digital artists such as Philippe Boisnard, Marc Veyrat, art2network).
In 2014 co-directed the film Bernard Heidsieck, poetry in action (which was also the subject of the DVD book-box Variations sur Bernard Heidsieck).
Under the name Paradise Now (his solo sound project since the 90s), he works in collaboration with the holistic performer Isa*Belle (several body/sound art installations and performances since 2005), the electronic musicians Christophe Bailleau (the Pastoral duo), Gauthier Keyaerts (within Supernova), Stephan Dunkelman as well as the vocalist Maja Jantar and several poets (including Ira Cohen, Gerard Malanga, Werner Moron, Eric Therer, Catrine Godin, Habiba Sheikh).
