David Lynch in Paris

What is David Lynch not up to these days? Elisabeth Franck-Dumas spoke to the American film director, in Paris, where he was releasing a CD, exhibiting his drawings, and creating a new project at Silencio, the private club for which he designed the interior. The article (David Lynch, la loi du silence, November 18) for Libération shows that it can be tricky talking to David Lynch (my translation):

What about the politics of making the club open only to members until midnight? "That's a question for Arnaud (Frisch, the owner). I am not the boss, I only helped with the design." And the name, Silencio, a reference to the legendary bar of Mulholland Drive, did he hesitate before bequeathing it to a real place? "They are the ones who wanted to use the name: I said OK, I like the name Silencio. But this is very different from the club in the movie, everything about it is different. But Silencio is a good name. It's a name that has, how do you put it, that has a kind of magic." He adds: "There is nothing here that could be connected to one of my films. At least I don't think so."

So we are not going to speak about his films, and not really about his many other projects at the moment. His album Crazy Clown Time, somber and hypnotic, which came out on November 8; David Lynch Works on Paper, his book of drawings just published by Steidl; the exhibit Mathématiques, at the Fondation Cartier through March 18, 2012, for which he was a major partner, dreaming up five little moving robots shaped like lamps, creatures enthusiastically developed by the Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (Inria) and gifted with artificial curiosity. He placed them in a large egg pierced with holes, where they dance around together, reacting to stimuli from visitors, crowned with grimacing heads in white latex. We would, it goes without saying, have gladly heard him speak about that. But we digress. Silencio it is.

The club, Silencio, is on the Rue Montmartre, in the 2e arrondissment of Paris.