Category: Non classé

The installation called Une partie de toi is a variation of Aloof and connects one voice with subtitles on a screen. 
A speaker emits a voice somewhere. Short fragments of a voice interrupted by more or less long silences. A high-pitched voice is looking for its limit and its breath: indefinite non verbal sounds between the sing and the shout. 
Farther in another part of the space, a screen shows, synchronously with each of these sound appearances, sentences in French which are similar to subtitles. The simultaneity can give to these words the status of an equivalence, a written translation or a hidden meaning. It is about hesitation, difficulty to tell, invisible links, close, very close, cut hand, cut-off part.
Unlike other sound installations that also came sometimes with a written translation, the presence of the words on screen here is not optional, not added, but integral part of the work indeed. It is the link established by the listeners – readers once they acquainted with the relation between what they are hearing and what they are reading, who gives sense and shape to the narrative.

Je m’en vais is a sound installation with 5 speakers divided in two acoustic perspectives.
The formal arrangements of this installation reproduces a story: one voice, alone in the foreground, who excludes itself and in order to be freed from a whole. A child evokes a start, a runaway and tells the various points of its strategy: to gather the necessary, and slip, without being heard from others, in the opening of the door.
In the first big room (a former reception hall), four speakers standing irregularly on the ground emit broken fragments of hubbub that seem to come from a family party (shatterings of uproars, calls, slices of songs and music that are mixed with laughter). It plays with silence and the resonance of the place. Further, in the second smaller room, a speaker is placed on a pedestal at ear level and emits the voices: the child telling her story of leaving and in an other way, exhalations (breathing, coughing) which are in direct connection and synchrony with the fragments of hubbub coming from the first room that we can hear from a distance.

In the elbow of the entrance, a speaker placed on a pedestal emits the voices interrupted with silences. Further, at the four corners of the main space, four speakers on the ground emit the broken fragments of hubbubs sequences.

Je m’en vais is one of four sequences of the collective exhibition 23’17, conceived as a partition taking place in time. We shared the desire with the other artists (Dominique Blais, Pascal Broccolichi, and Jérôme Poret) to think together on the possible forms of a group exhibition of sound installations. Our proposal explores the conditions for listening and sharing the same space. Each work introduces a specific relation to the place, that can be perceived clearly by the series of sound pieces, successively released.

version with subtitles

Je m’en vais (I’m leaving).
In this version for non-French-speaking countries, the sound stays the same (voices in French).
On the path from the first voice to the hubbub, a screen hung on wall displays the written and synchronous translation of the words. English translation by Miles Hankin.
 

version with 5 speakers

The installation called Le sens de la mesure consists of repeated fragments of sound that permeate and create links to one another as they resonate in the space. It has no beginning and no end: you can’t go around it. It consists of voice, sounds and silences played through five speakers arranged at opposite end of two sections of the space: on one side, a speaker standing on a pedestal plays the voice. On the other, four speakers on the ground mark off a section and play the other sounds.
The voice is a fixed point that is already audible in the galleries in the surrounding spaces. The visitor comes to it by ear, and truly understands the meaning of the words after reaching the installation (the natural acoustic of the site produces this simple effect). The voice: a woman speaking of her disrupted relationship with time, with orientation and with measure and proportions. A simple long sentence that plays fragment by fragment, interrupted by silences of varying lengths. The length of the silences corresponds to the space: the natural reverberation of the site, how far the sound carries, the way the work breathes the space.
The sounds playing on the four other speakers are concrete, musical and indeterminate: sequences of a few juxtaposed seconds, interrupted, repeated. They are also marked by silences, instituting a dialog with the voice (in between the sentence), but also with the other sounds produced naturally or accidentally in the site (though unintentional mimicry and counterpoint).

 

version with 5 haut-parleurs and subtitles

Le sens de la mesure (Das richtige Maß).
This version with German translation is located in an H-shaped space: one central part and four peripheral sides. Two acoustic perspectives are produced ready to be listened to:  a background and a figure. 
In the central part, a speaker is on a pedestal, slightly off the centre: the figure. In the peripheral parts, four speakers are set up on the floor and turned towards the ceiling. They delimit a field: the background. The background and the figure interact according to some hidden logic.

Somewhere, in the periphery, a video screen hanging on the wall shows the written and synchronized translation of the words. German translation by Ruth Kaaserer.

bilingual version French/English with 6 speakers

Le sens de la mesure (Sense of proportions).
Bilingual and musical version of the installation. A few steps away from the French voice, the addition of a translator’s voice (English translation in reported speech between commentary and litterality).
The installation is located within two levels. It structures two acoustic perspectives and divides up the listening into two times: a background and a figure. On the ground floor, four speakers hang on the walls (concrete sounds broken with silences). In the basement, two other speakers mounted on a pedestal do not face each other; the second one (voice of translator) is oriented towards the first (in French) which, to its turn, is oriented towards the middle section of the space
The sounds from the first level, which can be heard in the basement as coming from a distance, take on the aspect of some underlayer which would remotely interact with the voices.
Traduction orale en anglais de Peter O’Brien.

bilingual version French/English with 2 speakers

Le sens de la mesure (Sense of proportions).
For this version of the bilingual version, the two voices have been gathered on two speakers, mounted on a pedestal and in a non symmetrical position.

version with 1 speaker

First version of the installation called Le sens de la mesure, for one voice and silences.
A unique speaker on a pedestal like a specific dot in the space. Central spot, a strategic place from where the voice can be heard everywhere in the building. Dotted voice radiating and ruling the surroundings (for the listening audience).

5 heures du soir is an installation that makes hear on the same device five sound pieces (Quelqu’étiquettes, L’amorce des consignes, Au pied du lit, Extinction, Courants d’air), gathered here in a single work.
Five sequences that produce a sequel in which several characters, from several generations, speak in turn and evoke the announcement, the expectation, the coming, the unfolding then the immediate aftermath of a disaster. A disaster experienced, imagined or possible.
In a first space, four speakers on the ground emit noises and musical atmospheres in a succession of dramatic intensity and temporal suspensions. Further in a second space a fifth speaker on pedestal emits the voices. The sounds coming from the first space turn into background and accompaniment of the narratives when we are faced with these voices.

version with subtitles

5 heures du soir (5 o’clock in the evening).
In this version for non-French-speaking countries, the sound stays the same (voices in French). At the junction of the two spaces, a video screen hanging on the wall shows the written and synchronized translation of the words. English translation by Chet Wiener.Chet Wiener.
 

Le ventriloque is a composite work.
I cut up the gallery in five parts. One plus four. The first part, that’s the entry lock: informations area (editions, texts, radio interview, video interview), before enter the installation itself.
The second part, after the protective curtain, that’s the big and high room with the pillar. Several speakers on the ground for musical atmospheres, few sound flows, noises (of closing and opening) and all the resonances that the space’s reverberation produces.
The third part, that’s the small room in the middle, empty and dark. I use it only to keep some distance between the big room and the voices. This space plays the same part as the silence in compositions. The words area, that’s the fourth part: the window behind the half-opened door. Several voices which comes from a space that we can only glimpse (except from the street). These voices open a way to narratives. As a foreground, floating figures above the previous sounds (that the listener perceives now from a small distance).
Finally, the fifth part, totally hidden, is the storage inaccessible area, for other voices without text (calls, screams, hums) behind the walls.
Several sequences, broken with silences, follow, mixing successively, depending the time and place where the listener is, music with or without noises, with or without voices.

I decide to use and leave on the ground on sight and in evidence, all the equipment found and borrowed in the various services of the University: portable players, mini stereo systems and mismatched speakers.

The installation called La porte ne s’est pas ouverte uses five speakers and connects two acoustic perspectives: a voice and a musical background.
In a first space, a first speaker emits a voice. It is like a dot in the space, mounted on a pedestal at ear level. A child tells a story about a moment of dramatic change: a flaw opens up and makes way to fear. 
In a second space nearby, a very larger and more sonorous one, four speakers emit musical atmospheres. They delimit a field: in this version the speakers are located on table or on the ground. The reverberation makes the emitted sounds flourish.
The installation plays on the distances, the acoustic difference peculiar to both spaces and connects the voice, perceived as a figure, with the reverberated sounds, perceived as a background. When the child’s story gets stuck, fear appears and the music begins. Three different musical atmospheres (shrills from an electric guitar / sharp and metallic shock waves / vibrations and pulsations) follow one another and give this fear various colours.

 

version with subtitles

La porte ne s’est pas ouverte (The door didn’t open).
This version took place in the big pavillon of the Museum.
The first speaker for the voice located in a gateway corridor. The four speakers for the musics hang up high on the walls in the pavillon.
In this version for non-French-speaking countries, the sound stays the same (voices in French).
Somewhere, in the periphery, a video screen hanging on the wall shows the written and synchronized translation of the words.
English translation by Miles Hankin.
 

The installation called La tête la première is a composite work and takes up a whole building, almost all in one piece: the upper floor is used as a gangway and the openings are not a limit to the emitting of the sounds. The voices find refuge in a small room on the ground floor which is plunged in darkness and on the gangway upstairs: speakers at ear level. The other sounds (screams – songs, puffs, whistling, frequency, beats, impacts, suspended chorus) are laid out as if they were produced by the architecture itself: on the ground, up high on the beams (vault under the roof), under the stairs or behind a wall.
The installation divides out a range of sound elements from a whole to be pieced again together. It has no centre, does not use all the speakers at the same time, plays with the distances, connects what is close with what is distant. It is made up of several sound pieces and silences, connecting together some of the different parts, in a way that is peculiar to each sequence. Sometimes a sound, or a musical element, from one end of the building to the other, accompanies a voice. Other times, it amplifies it, manipulates it or relativizes it

The installation called Quelqu’un est tombé over takes up three rooms and plays with their proximity, their natures and their acoustics. One layer at a time, a narrative, unfolding throughout the three spaces, is being built up.
In the first large room, with a very sonorous acoustics, four speakers set high up on either side of the columns emit a series of short sounds (bursts, stridences) broken with silences. In the small airlock in-between, also very sonorous, a speaker standing on the floor and turned the other way round to face the wall emits flows of instruments, muffled puffs and vibrations, long and tensed sequences, all of them perceived as if they were some underlayer from somewhere beyond.
Finally, and this is the third stratum of the installation, a speaker set on a pedestal in the last room, which for the occasion has been turned into a particularly muffled space (carpet on the floor and wall insulation) designed as if it were a box for words, emits voices. This speaker stands indirectly:  the space must be walked through and one must turn round to face it. The acoustic contrast of this muffled space enables the listener to add up the sound layers coming from the three adjacent spaces: the sounding bursts, the music flow, the words.
The narrative comes out, some figures stand out from the background, some bonds are revealed. A woman tells us that someone has fallen over, a child describes a fragmented landscape, another walks, trips over and endlessly falls down.

The installation called Les liens invisibles is located in three adjacent rooms, all opened the ones onto the others.
In each one of them, a speaker mounted on a pedestal emits the fragments of a voice: a long sentence broken up into three units (three dots in the space, three acoustic perspectives that stand out and rise in tiers according to where the listener finds himself) and whose meaning continues to bounce form point to point.
Alternately with the spoken sequences and the different nooks of the place, four speakers set up on the floor delimit a square (in reference to the general plan) and emit musical and sound atmospheres which fill up the whole place..