Les liens invisibles, variation of Quant-à-soi (which has already engendered multiple versions about the same concept of invisible links, including Aloof, Proche, très proche, La main coupée, Les liens en sourdine) is a sound installation with five speakers that reveals itself in several stages.
It forms two synchronous but remote planes – first noises, then a voice – and must be listened to as we walk, building up according to our spatial and mental progress.
In 2015 in Île de Vassivière, the installation took place in a tower.
On the first level, four speakers are standing on the wall surrounding the visitor who enters the tower. They form a first sound screen that consists of a series of noises circulating from one speaker to another, interspersed with silences. Each of these sounds is an action produced with objects that seem to be made of glass. Their apparitions, articulations and movements follow a logic that eludes us. At times, a sound wave fills the entire space of the tower.
At the top of this tower, after having climbed the huge circular staircase, we can discover a fifth speaker fixed on the small platform at ear height. It emits a voice that has remained hidden from us until then. The way we discover it depends on our movement and the way we listen. It is by approaching and accessing this second space that we can hear – more or less strongly and distinctly according to the distance – short sentences, also interspersed with silences and broadcast in exact synchronicity with the sounds of the first room – sounds that are now perceived in the distance, accompanied by their reverberation.
It is this synchronicity that has made it possible to hide the voice: each sentence has a corresponding noise, and each noise is linked to a sentence – noise and speech like the two sides of a medal, joined together in editing and then separated ans spatially removed from each other in the installation.
When the voice appears, connections are revealed, a narrative becomes possible: a woman speaks to us, evoking invisible links that connect her to others, to people, objects or entities that she has trouble defining or naming. Her fragmented speech remains undetermined and suspended.
Once the two sounds planes are revealed, we can move back and forth between the two poles, choosing one over the other or any of the intermediate degrees, determine the near and far and listen to their invisible links.

version with subtitles

Les liens invisibles (The invisible links).
The installation took place on the two levels of the museum: the main galleries and the mezzanine area. The installation encourages the people traveling through the espace and listening to the sounds to make synchronic connections between the noises and the voice in their concentrated and attentive perambulation of the space.
On the first level the four speakers for the noises are standing on the floor in a scattered configuration. Upstairs on the mezzanine (a balcony space that along with an open walkway) a fifth speaker on pedestal emits the voice.

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 that can be heard a few meters. English translation. by Miles Hankin.