ANRI SALA
Tirana, Albania, 1974

No Window No Cry (Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, Centre Pompidou, Paris), 2012
Music box, glass, metal window frame
423 x 159 x 14 cm
Acquired in 2019

Anri Sala originally conceived this work as a site-specific intervention on a windowpane at the Centre Pompidou, overlooking the famous Stravinsky Fountain designed by Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely in homage to the Russian composer. Sala embedded a music box into the glass, allowing museum visitors to add a soundtrack to their viewing of the fountain’s kinetic movements. But the space “carved” into the glass — so that a hand could reach and activate the mechanism — also distorted the view.

This new version introduces a compelling shift in space and time: the sheet of glass is now framed within a freestanding metal structure that replicates the Paris museum’s original framework. Positioned in front of another window, it offers a new vantage point — this time, of the kinetic movements of ships entering and leaving the Bay of Santander. This juxtaposition also draws attention to architectural similarities between two buildings designed by the same architect, forty years apart.

Sala reuses the same melody he employed in Paris, Should I Stay or Should I Go?, an iconic punk rock song by British band The Clash. The title also nods to another legendary track, No Woman, No Cry, written in 1974 by Bob Marley and the Wailers.