Art Newspaper

The controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq will be giving smokers a break in Paris next week; his new exhibition of photographs at the Palais de Tokyo (Rester Vivant, 23 June-11 September) includes a room for nicotine lovers. Its just me having a fraternal thought for my fellow addicts, Houellebecq tells us. The smoking room includes a bar and jukebox which will pay musical versions of 70 of his poems. 

The award-winning author says the show feels like a return to poetry. He says: Ive organised the rooms so they follow one another, like a book-length collection in which the poems produce a narrative by being placed in a certain order, even if it remains far vaguer than in a novel.

Various aspects of French culture and architecture are depicted in Houellebecqs photographs. One image, France #014 (1994), shows the word Europe carved in concrete. Asked about the UKs referendum on whether to remain in the European Union, which is on the day his exhibition opens, Houellebecq says: The French are as torn as the English.

Other works depict life in Paris, the France I have most experience of, Houellebecq says. Ive generally lived in the suburbs. They arent rural areas, more like peri-urban zonesin other words, where people now vote Front National, he writes in the catalogue.

The first room of the exhibition includes an image emblazoned with the words Il est temps de faire vos jeux (it is time to place your bets); the sentence is taken from one of Houellebecqs poems entitled The Memory of the Sea, while a section on women includes two series of six photographs. The exhibition also includes works by the Lyon-born artist Robert Combas and Vietnam-based Renaud Marchand, along with two MRI scans of Houellebecqs brain.

Houellebecqs health has also come under the spotlight in Manifesta 11, in Zurich (until 18 September). As part of the biennial, the surgeon Henry Perschak gave Houellebecq a check-up, and visitors can see the results.

Bitte, bitte, urged attendants at the Theater Basel, pressing earplugs into the hands of audience members there to see the Swiss premiere of Turner Prize-winning, Glasgow-born artist Douglas Gordon and composer Philip Venabless Bound to Hurt. While it may seem counter-intuitive to distribute earplugs before what is essentially a contemporary opera, they turned out to be a most welcome piece of kit. The plot deals with domestic violence, and at times the soundtrack was loud enough to rumble seats. Jarring, spliced versions of pop classics such as I Feel Love and Cant Take My Eyes Off You were performed by an onstage band that featured a musician who pounded his luridly lit drum with impressive right hooks. Empty wine bottles and tangled Christmas lights littered the stagea landscape into which the performer Ruth Rosenfeld crawled, memorialising a broken relationship (the other half of whom is probably the lifeless figure under a sheet at stage left). Remember the time we went to Brians party and you were like so drunk you threw up all over Archie? she asks. That was funny, wasnt it? Gordon is a student of violence but aside from the volume, the opera is fairly restrained. The most constant refrain is the sound of Rosenfeld knocking over empty wine bottles, which is amplified by a nearby microphone. Before Thursdays performance, Gordon could be seen pouring an entire bottle of red wine onto the stage. For verisimilitude? No. Its a kind of blessing, he explained.