❝ The first version of Orient-Occident is music for the film realised by Enrico Fulchignoni, commissioned by the Unesco and performed in Cannes on May 1960. The film was about an exhibit in 1958-59 organised by Vadim Eliséeff, curator of the Parisian museum ‘Musée Cernuschi’, which showed sculptures and other objects from Asia, Europe and Egypt and highlighted the relationships between East (Orient) and West (Occident). ❞ *

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❝ Orient-Occident (1960) is very different from the other electroacoustic pieces of Xenakis (and even from his whole music) … on the level of sound objects’ montage, Orient-Occident doesn’t follow the schaefferian project, which is characterized by the attempt to replace the note by the sound object in the hope of remaining into the traditional definition of music … ❞ *

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❝ Xenakis, who “found God” at 13 but was a staunch atheist later on, once said that art could “lead to realms that religion still occupies for some people.” ❞ *