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 specialises in research into alternative visual cultures, experimental art, sound studies and the avant-garde. He received his PhD from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he teaches contemporary art history.
He has written several texts exploring the visual and sonic contributions of counter-cultures 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, in Cahiers du CAP and Histo.art (Éditions de la Sorbonne), as well as in books devoted to the work of Nigel Ayers, Zoe Dewitt, Genesis P-Orridge, The Rita and to the visual history of black metal (Analogue Black Terror, vol. I and II, Arma Christi).
Lately, he curated the exhibition “Who You Staring At? Visual culture of the no wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s” (Centre Pompidou, 2023), as well as the “Sound Art Live” program and the listening lounge of the exhibition “I Never Dream Otherwise than Awake: Journeys in Sound” (Centre Pompidou × West Bund Museum Project, Shanghai, 2024). He also curated the exhibitions “AntipsychiARTrie: Art and antipsychiatry from 1960 to the present” (Institut national d’histoire de l’art – INHA, 2019) with the research group Athamas – Art and Anti-psychiatry and “Persuasion: Industrial Music and Mind Control (1975-1995)” (Geneva, HEAD, April 2-18, 2015) for the research project “MIND CONTROL, Radical Experiments in Art and Psychology 1950-1970.” 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.
​
He is currently leading a research project on pro-sex perspectives in art from the 1960s to the present.
Recent books and articles of his include:
- Shock Factory: The Visual Culture of Industrial Music (expanded edition in English with Intellect Books, 2025; French edition with Les Presses du Réel, 2023).
- “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.
- “‘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.
-“‘Alpha females’: Feminist Transgressions in Industrial Music” (Octopus notes, 2018; Arts, 2022), about pro-sex feminism in industrial music.
- 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.
- “‘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.
- “‘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.
- Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Nekrophile, vol. 1 – “Archives and Documents” & vol. 2 – “Messages and Prophecies” (Timeless Editions, 2018).
-“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.