About
Nicolas Ballet
Nicolas Ballet is an art historian and associate curator in the New Media Department of the Musée national d’art moderne – Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. He specializes in research into alternative visual cultures, experimental art, sound studies and the avant-garde. He received his Ph.D. from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he teaches contemporary art history.
He has written essays exploring the visual and sonic contributions of countercultures and experimental artistic practices. He is the author of Shock Factory: The Visual Culture of Industrial Music (Les Presses du réel, 2023; Intellect Books, 2025), and has published in Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne, Octopus Notes, Marges, Optical Sound, Volume !, Revue & Corrigée, Klima, Cahiers du CAP, and Histo.art (Éditions de la Sorbonne) as well as in books devoted to the work of Nigel Ayers, John Balance, Monte Cazazza, Zoe Dewitt, Genesis P-Orridge, The Rita, and to the visual history of black metal (Analogue Black Terror, vol. I, 2019; vol. II, 2021 and Arma Christi: Black Metal Apparel from the 20th Century, 2025).
In 2023, he curated the exhibition “Who You Staring At?” Visual Culture of the No Wave Scene in the 1970s and 1980s at the Centre Pompidou. He also curated Persuasion: Industrial Music and Mind Control (1975–1995) (Geneva, HEAD, 2015) for the research project “MIND CONTROL, Radical Experiments in Art and Psychology 1950–1970,” AntipsychiARTrie: Art and Antipsychiatry from 1960 to the Present (INHA, 2019, with Aurore Buffetault, Hélene Gheysens and Sandrine Meats), “Where May we sit?” Activist Video from the 1970s in France (Centre Pompidou, 2022–23, with Julie Champion and Hélene Fleckinger) and Fred Forest and Information Technology: Archives of Video and Digital Projects (Centre Pompidou, 2024, with Philippe Bettinelli and Rossella Cillani). He also organized the event “Industrial Music and Experimental Films from San Francisco by Marian Wallace” in Paris (Les Voûtes, May 2016), before presenting the cine-concert performed by the French projects Cent Ans de Solitude and Flint Glass on the movie Sprengbagger 1010 (1929) at the INHA in Paris in September 2016.
Nicolas Ballet was also awarded the Olga Fradiss Prize 2024, from the Fondation Lucie et Olga Fradiss, hosted by the Fondation de France, for the French edition of his book, Shock Factory. Culture visuelle des musiques industrielles (1969–1995) (2023).
He is currently leading a research project on pro-sex perspectives in art from the 1960s to the present. He is also editing the publication of a book on the links between radical psychiatry and the visual arts, and is conducting a new study on the sounds and images of non-places through analog horror, liminal spaces and lost media.
Publications (selection)
Books:
▪ Shock Factory: The Visual Culture of Industrial Music (expanded edition in English with Intellect Books, 2025; French edition with Les Presses du Réel, 2023).
▪ The Last Slogan (with Jean-Pierre Turmel) (Timeless Editions, 2022), comprised of an interview with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, theoretical texts on he/r work, and archival documents from the personal collection of Jean-Pierre Turmel.
▪ Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Nekrophile, vol. 1 – “Archives and Documents” & vol. 2 – “Messages and Prophecies” (Timeless Editions, 2018). Two volumes on the work of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and he/r contribution to alternative art and culture since the mid-1960s. The second volume (“Messages and Prophecies”) concentrates on more personal aspects of GBPO's life and art, and contains reproductions of two richly illustrated magic albums.
Essays published in edited volumes:
▪ “'An unrelenting threat to your value system:' Monte Cazazza’s Transgressions” in Monte Cazazza, I’ll be famous when I’m dead (VOD-Records, 2025).
▪ “A Second Dead Skin: Wearing Black Metal Spirit” in Metastazis, Arma Christi: Black Metal Apparel from the 20th Century (Cult Never Dies, 2025), an essay on the visual history of the black metal scene in the 1980s and 1990s, through the musical genre's style of dress.
▪ “Possession: The Mediumistic Art of John Balance” in The Art, Music and Writings of Geoffrey Rushton alias John Balance (VOD-Records, 2024).
▪ “Something Came Over Me : Les camouflages de Laurence Dupré” in Émilie Hammen, Pascal Rousseau (eds.), Histo.art 16, (Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2024).
▪ “‘Breaking In The Shank’: Visual Troubles in The Rita’s artworks” in The Rita: Correlations (Amaya Productions, 2023), exploring the graphic work designed by Canadian artist Sam McKinlay to illustrate his sound productions and performances with The Rita harsh noise project, linked to 19th and 20th century art history.
▪ “Haunted Bodies” in Zoe Dewitt, Body and Metaphysics. Incomplete Archives, 1980-2022 (Goswell Road, 2022).
▪ “Crowleymass. Émergence d’une occulture industrielle” in Philippe Pissier (ed.), À la croisée des chemins & autres textes. Une anthologie introductive à l’œuvre d’Aleister Crowley, volume 1 (ANIMA, 2022).
▪ “Bleeding Images: Antipsychiatry, Death and Mind Control in the Art of Nigel Ayers” in Nigel Ayers, Electronic Resistance (Amaya Productions, 2021).
▪ “Within The Abyss: Weaponized Cassette Culture” in Analogue Black Terror, vol. 2 (Nuclear War Now!, 2020).
▪ “Under the Sign of Hell: Black Metal Satanist Regeneration” in Analogue Black Terror (Nuclear War Now!, 2019).
Prefaces
▪ “Pour une mémoire collective underground” in Sarah Benhaïm, Chroniques du bruit (ARTDERIEN, 2023).
▪ “‘Death Posture’: The Divided Self of Michael Zoe Dewitt” in Zoe Dewitt, Nekrophile Rekords (1983-1990): Texts, Documents, Materials (Edition Ananael, 2022), exploring the history of the Nekrophile Rekords label and the Korpses Katatonik and Zero Kama bands conceived by Austrian artist Michael Zoe Dewitt in the early 1980s.
Essays published in conference proceedings
▪ “Stridence de la minutie. Les mises en scène expérimentales d’Anne Gillis” in Amandine Lebarbier, Sarah Hassid (dir.), Figures de musiciennes Mises en scènes, en images et en récits (XIXe-XXIe siècle) (Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2025.
▪ “Destruction, ruine et trauma dans la culture visuelle des musiques industrielles” in Cyril Barde, Sylvia Chassaing, Hermeline Pernoud (eds.), Fin-de-siècle : fin de l’art ? Destins de l’art dans les discours de la fin des XIX e et XXe siècles (Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2018).
▪ “Musique industrielle et esthétisation de l’horreur. Les tactiques de choc du groupe SPK” (L’Autre musique, 2016).
Essays published in art journals
▪ “L’Empire de la douleur. Le surréalisme noir de Johanna Went et Dame Darcy” (Optical Sound, #9, 2024). American artists Johanna Went and Dame Darcy invent characters that they embody in performances and videos designed to confront the viewer with the absurd and the bizarre. Found materials, drawings altered by the action of reprography (Xerox art) for the design of posters and zines, as well as surreal filmed stagings are all elements that contribute to creating alternative universes, designed to re-enchant the reality of artists evolving on the margins of the official history of art of the 1980s and 1990s.
▪ Special issue “Corps modifié sous influence technologique” [Modified Body Under Technological Influence] (Les Cahiers du Mnam, #164, 2023), co-edited by Nicolas Ballet, Juliette Bessette and Jessica Ragazzini.
▪ “‘Jeans as a Fact of Art’. Détournements glam du groupe Les Petites Bonbons” (Cahiers du CAP, 2021), about how the American performance art group Les Petites Bonbons invested Hollywood’s glitter rock scene to work on gender, the role of the artist and the star through performance and mail art.
▪ “Psychic Driving. Les techniques de contrôle mental et leur détournement dans les musiques industrielles” (Histo.art, 2019), analysing mind control techniques in industrial music.
▪ “Survival Research Laboratories: A Dystopian Industrial Performance Art” (Arts, 2019), about the performances of the art group SRL.
▪ “'War of Nerves'. Culture cyborg et influence dadaïste dans les musiques industrielles” (Optical Sound, #6, 2019). This article explores how artists Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Paul Hurst, Steven Stapleton and Nigel Ayers seized upon the figure of the cyborg under the influence of Dadaist works of the 1910s and 1920s, devoted to the ambivalent relationship between man and machine.
▪ “‘Alpha females’: Feminist Transgressions in Industrial Music” (Octopus notes, 2018; Arts, 2022), about pro-sex feminism in industrial music.
▪ “Symphony for a Genocide. Musiques industrielles et totalitarisme” (Marges, 2018), examining totalitarian imagery in the visual representation of different bands.
▪ “Révolution bioélectronique. Les musiques industrielles sous influence burroughsienne” (Les Cahiers du Mnam, 2017), analysing the influence of William S. Burroughs on industrial culture.