Villes Flottantes / Floating Cities / Cidades Flutuantes
Floating Cities
A work dedicated to the living
In a world facing ecological emergencies and systemic upheavals, Floating Cities stands out as a deeply committed work. At the crossroads of artistic languages, this project led by Elsa Mroziewicz and Cécile Palusinski questions the link between humans and the ocean.
Each imagined floating city draws inspiration from concrete initiatives to address environmental challenges, stemming from a variety of cultural and geographical contexts. Floating Cities gives shape and voice to these alternatives through an immersive aesthetic, where augmented reality and sound poetry interact, weaving connections between them to better convey, awaken, and connect.
Here, there is nothing abstract or theoretical: the work is rooted in the territories traversed, in the gestures observed, in the stories collected during residencies in Taiwan, India, Tunisia, Morocco, Brazil, the United States, and France. Each painting thus becomes a fragment of the world, inhabited by voices, memories, and solutions rooted in lived experience.
It is an art of connection that unfolds: a connection between ancient knowledge, through embroidery, and contemporary technologies, between scientific data and poetic narration, between the political and the sensory. Thanks to the Under The Starry Vault mobile app, viewers are invited to animate the images and listen to sound haikus and audio logs. They are no longer mere visitors, but storytellers, activating a living memory where the voices of the world resonate.
Beyond the interactive device, it is also a subtle reflection on time that runs through the entire work.. The almost instantaneous nature of digital technology contrasts sharply with the slow pace of embroidery. Created in collaboration with embroidery collectives in Brazil (Bumba Meu Boi da Floresta de Mestre Apolônio, São Luís) and India (Kalhath Institute, Lucknow), these embroideries give form to the invisible, to currents, corals, and creatures of the deep.
By choosing to combine technology and craftsmanship, speed and slowness, Floating Cities creates a space for listening and contemplation, where the re-enchantment of the world becomes possible—not as a return to the past, but as a movement toward a livable future, shaped by imagination and a commitment to life.
Exhibitions
As part of the France-Brazil Season 2025
Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, Brésil
From September 6 to November 30, 2025
Centro Cultural Vale Maranhão (São Luís)
November 18, 2025 to May 18,2026, Brazil
Musée Cais do Sertao (Recife)
From December 15 to January 31, 2026
Past exhibitions
Conference “A work of art committed to the environment” at the UNOC3 (United Nation Ocean Conference) in Nice, June 2025
Biennale de la créativité, Strasbourg 2023
Nuit des chercheurs, Strasbourg, 2023
Alliance française de Pune, Inde, 2023
Institut français du Luxembourg, 2023
Alliances françaises de Bizerte, Gabès et de Djerba, 2024
PiXii Festival, La Rochelle, 2024
Musée national de la Marine de Rochefort, 2024
Open Factory au Centquatre, December 2024
Festival Rec’n’Play à Recife, November 2024
Exhibition at la Casa Barão de Camocim à Fortaleza in Brazil, November 2024
Festival of Ideas – We Are The Ocean – alliances françaises de Delhi, Chennai et Pondichery, Inde, May 2025
Between immersive technology and traditional know-how
Floating Cities is an immersive visual and sound work that invites the public to explore imaginary cities offering solutions to environmental challenges. Using a mobile application, each painting can be animated in augmented reality: visitors can thus discover moving scenes, accompanied by sound haikus that poetically evoke the innovations highlighted.
Each painting is enhanced by an audio and video logbook, recounting the testimonies and stories collected during artistic residencies in six countries – Taiwan, India, Tunisia, Brazil, France and the United States.
The embroidered version, created with craftsmen from Brazil and India, sublimates the seabed and the mythological figures of the ocean, giving them substance and dimension. It pays tribute to the slowness of the ancestral gesture, in fruitful dialogue with the speed of digital technologies, to better question our relationship with time and living things.
Available in Portuguese, French and English.
Artistic approach
An artistic approach committed to the living
Through Villes Flottantes, the artists explore the relationship between man and nature, offering a sensitive, poetic and resolutely committed vision. Their work is part of an artistic approach that serves the environment, highlighting concrete solutions, inspiring stories and hopeful gestures in the face of the climate emergency.
By combining immersive technologies and traditional practices, they build bridges between innovation and memory, imagination and reality, art and science. Their work invites us to rethink our relationship with living things, to slow down, to listen, and to reconnect with what binds us to changing ecosystems.
Re-enchanting the world, giving new strength to the stories, to beauty and to the territories’ voices: this is the ambition that drives this trans-disciplinary creation.
Commitment in the field
Concerned with taking action in the field and putting art at the service of the environment, in 2022 the artists created the “Socotra Dragon Blood Tree” association with the aim of working towards the reforestation of the Socotra dragon tree, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site. In 2024, the association won the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Support Program for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) active in biodiversity in developing countries (ProBioDev). They also donate a percentage of the sales of their works to associative projects related to the preservation of the forest and its ecosystems in the territories where they came to live.
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OFFERING A MULTICULTURAL VISION OF THESE IMAGINARY FUTURISTIC FLOATING CITIES
We have selected the following countries, where we have planned trips or residencies, to present a multicultural vision of man’s relationship with the ocean, with a choice of floating cities on the sea (salt water) or on rivers (fresh water), faced with the problem of rising sea levels
Floating city 1:
– Taiwan (Villa Formose October 2023: production of a prototype)
Floating city 2:
– France (Strasbourg – completed in the first half of 2024)
Floating city 3:
– India (project launch at the Villa Swagatam of the Institut français + MAD Salon+lab in November/December 2023 and continuation in 2024)
Floating city 4:
– Tunisia (2024)/ Morocco (2025)
Floating City 5:
– Brazil (October/November 2024 – with the support of the Institut français, the Consulate General of France in Recife, and the Vale Maranhao Cultural Center)
Floating City 6:
– United States (first quarter of 2025: more specifically Miami) Villa Albertine
A total of six floating cities.
Co-creation: Elsa Mroziewicz and Cécile Palusinski
Visual artist and animations: Elsa Mroziewicz
Texts and audio content: Cécile Palusinski
Curators: Cécile Palusinski and Elsa Mroziewicz
In collaboration with:
Michel Ravey, web designer and developer
Jean-Paul le Goff, musician
Supported by:
The Grand Est region and DRAC Grand Est
Winner of Tango et scan 2023, supported by Eurométropole de Strasbourg, Tango&Scan, Accro, and the city of Karlsruhe
Winner of Villa Formose XR, in partnership with CNC, TAICCA, Kaohsiung Film Archive, the French Office in Taipei, and the Institut Français.
Villa Swagatam, French Institute of India, MAD Salon+Lab Villa Albertine
The CNC
The Centro Cultural Vale Maranhão, the Consulate General of France in Recife
The Michalski Foundation
The Villa Albertine
