Some of the most talked-about rooms of an art fair week are the ones that need no ticket. This October Art Basel adds one in Paris: together with the concert promoter Live Nation, the fair presents GOD HATES SPACE, an immersive installation by the duo GENER8ION, in the Rotonde d'Antin of the Grand Palais. It is the first time Art Basel has worked with Live Nation, and the first time the rotunda is part of the Art Basel Paris programme.
Who is behind GENER8ION
GENER8ION are two people: the producer and composer Surkin and the filmmaker Romain Gavras. Surkin, born Benoît Heitz, is a French producer, composer and DJ from the generation known as French Touch 2.0, and he wrote the score for ATHENA, the third feature film by Gavras. Gavras, French and Greek and a product of the Kourtrajmé collective, has directed music videos such as Stress for Justice, Born Free for M.I.A., Gosh for Jamie xx and No Church in the Wild for Jay-Z and Kanye West. His feature films run from Our Day Will Come and The World Is Yours to ATHENA; the newest, Sacrifice, was set to start on Netflix on 16 October 2026.
As a pair they reach far beyond the gallery world. Their video for STORM with the Swedish rapper Yung Lean has passed 37 million views on YouTube. Their performance at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards brought the song wide attention; it has passed 60 million streams on Spotify and reached the global Shazam Top 5, at number one in the United States and Canada.
A twelve-metre screen, seen from both sides
The installation runs on a double-sided screen twelve metres wide, and the rotunda around it becomes a single audiovisual space in which film, sound and the architecture of the building work together. GOD HATES SPACE belongs to a fragmented story that GENER8ION set in the near future, and Paris is the first place it is shown in France. It continues the world of LOVE & TEARS, the album the duo released on 12 June 2026, in which the track God Hates Space with 070 Shake is one of the opening chapters.
If you are wary of immersive formats in general, our piece on the immersive show sets out what to look for. This case is unusual: the work comes out of a music video practice rather than a projection company, and it is shown inside an art fair week, not in a converted warehouse.
Why an art fair does this
Art Basel presents the project as part of its commitment to bring disciplines, artistic practices and audiences together, and to offer experiences that are open to as many people as possible. For Live Nation France and Art Basel Paris it is a first joint project, meant to put contemporary art, music, cinema and the creative industries in dialogue and to give contemporary French creativity an audience in France and abroad. Free admission is the practical side of that idea: the fair calls the installation a new gateway into its world, for visitors with a fair ticket and for everyone else.
Opening hours and the way in
GOD HATES SPACE is open from Thursday 22 to Sunday 25 October 2026. On Thursday, Saturday and Sunday the doors open from 9:30 to 20:00, on Friday 23 October from 9:30 to 22:30. Entry is free through Entrance 4 of the Grand Palais on Avenue Winston Churchill in the 8th arrondissement. Friday has the longest opening and suits anyone combining the visit with an evening elsewhere in Paris. For the fair in its home town, see our page on Art Basel in Basel.
