Maison Ruinart in Reims has opened its historic chalk cellars to a new kind of resonance. The Franco-Swiss artist Julian Charrière presents Chorals, an immersive sound installation that blends light, water, and geology to reflect on the fragile ties between past oceans and today’s ecological realities.
An environmental art project beneath Reims
Charrière’s latest work is framed as an environmental art project, staged inside the crayères – the vast, UNESCO-listed chalk cellars carved beneath Champagne’s oldest maison. These underground chambers, once part of an ancient seabed, carry the compressed remains of marine life. By reintroducing oceanic soundscapes into this hollowed architecture, the installation creates what the artist describes as a collapse of time, where echoes of the sea reawaken the stone walls.
The soundscape combines recordings made during Charrière’s own dives with contributions from marine biologists worldwide. Crackling reefs, fish vocalizations, crustacean clicks, and subtle currents are woven together, transforming the cellar into a living chorus. Paired with a wave machine that stirs ripples in a reflective pool, the experience becomes both physical and auditory—sound felt as much as heard.
Julian Charrière’s Dialogue with memory and matter
For Charrière, sound is more than an artistic medium; it is a form of mapping presence. He has suggested that echoes within the chalk walls act like an archaeological record—imperfect, porous, and shaped by time. By choosing not to impose a narrative, the installation emphasizes the overlooked sonic richness of coral ecosystems, making the crayères into a resonant chamber where marine memory vibrates once again.
The work also invites reflection on environmental urgency. While chalk strata took millions of years to form, human activity now disrupts marine ecosystems in mere decades. Chorals mirrors this imbalance, contrasting geological time with the accelerating pace of ecological change.
Through this multisensory journey, Julian Charrière merges the voices of oceans past and present into a single, resonant lament—a reminder that the material world remembers, even when we forget.
Don’t miss our conversation with Julian Charrière, where he discusses deep time, environmental fragility, and how art reshapes our way of seeing.
Photography by CHLOÉ LE RESTE
Courtesy of RUINART
