For its fifth edition in 2026, OFFSCREEN returns for the second time to the exceptional La Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière, once again activating this distinct architectural landmark. Earlier editions took place in the brutalist Grand Garage Haussmann building and the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild.
Once a renowned home to site specific interventions at the end of the 20th, featuring installations by Anselm Kiefer, Bob Wilson, Lucinda Childs, Bill Viola, Nan Goldin, and Christian Boltanski as part of the Festival d’Automne, the Chapelle de la Salpêtrière remains to be rediscovered.
The Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière was originally designed by Louis Le Vau, architect to Louis XIV. He passed away before completing the project, and Libéral Bruant, designer of Hôtel des Invalides and Notre-Dame des Victoires completed the task. The massive church is built in the shape of a Greek cross, with four naves and four chapels arranged around a central section topped by an octagonal dome with windows and an oculus allowing for the passage of the light.
Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière - AP-HP has a dramatic and important history. Before it was a hospital, in the 17th century it was a hospice, used as a detention center for “degenerate” women. In the 19th century, the space transitioned into a medical establishment focused on neurological and mental health. Still with a focus on “insane and incurable” women, the asylum was home to early prepsychiatric studies and treatments for madness by Philippe Pinel and Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol.
In the late 19th century, Jean-Martin Charcot carried out his famous studies on hysteria and hypnosis here, including his immense output of early photographic documentation of physical hysterical symptoms.
In connection with the history of La Salpêtrière Hospital, OFFSCREEN unveiled a rare selection of photographic prints from a collection of 47 plates produced by Albert Londe in 1893 during Dr. Charcot’s sessions.
Created in 1882, the Salpêtrière Photographic Service was a pioneer in the use of medical photography, capturing the fleeting symptoms of hysteria, epilepsy and states of crisis with unprecedented precision. The photographs on display, at the crossroads of art, science and power, also bear witness to a controversial staging, Jean-Martin Charcot’s famous ‘Tuesday lectures’ having been described as « veritable spectacles ».
Beyond their documentary function, his photographs are marked by a strong theatricality, with patients often staged as is evident in the presence of the beds, backdrops, and doctors watching on. Georges Didi-Huberman theorized the theatricality of these images in his seminal 1982 work The Invention of Hysteria.
