Category: Non classé

La logique fantôme (Ätherische Logik)
9 texts on paper
2023

solo exhibition Le poumon et les nerfs (Lunge und Nerven), Sound Body Space program, PEAC Museum, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Allemagne, 2023 (cur. Lea Altner)

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What reading gives us to hear.

Nine short printed texts (translated from French into German and English) on a sheet of paper are made available at the junction of each room of a big space of exhibition.

These nine texts are a proposal of coincidences. Like an non-explanatory and incomplete notice to the sound work, each text develops in a few words a notion linked to listening a sound work and to the experience of visiting the resonant space. 
Translations by Elke Albrecht.

PEAC Musuem, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 2023 – photos D.P.

Le poumon et les nerfs (Lunge und Nerven)
sound installation with 17 speakers
2023

solo exhibition Le poumon et les nerfs (Lunge und Nerven), Sound Body Space program, PEAC Museum, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Germany, 2023 (cur. Lea Altner)
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The exhibition presents a global sound installation taking into account the entire exhibition space as a resonant space.
The installation, without voices or words, plays with links and tension between bass sounds and treble sounds.

The installation is spread over 17 speakers in 9 rooms.

The bass sounds in low-frequencies (vibrations, resonances, pulsations) are diffused on four black speakers located on the ground in four rooms more or less in the center of the exhibition space. Their diffusion is prolonged and spreads homogeneously from distance to distance like a cloud in other spaces.

The treble sounds (noises of splintering objects) in high-frequencies are diffused on fourteen white speakers located at different heights on the walls and scattered throughout the exhibition space. These sounds are brief, disjointed, disarticulated, and the fragments are separated and spread from one speaker to another, from one room to another. They act as punctuation, triggers and interruptions for the bass sounds.

The composition thus articulates treble sounds with bass sounds in a succession of sequences interspersed with silences, like an articulated mechanism, a resonant machine that opens and closes, contracts and expands in turn according to its own logic and its own measure.

                        preparatory sketch before installation

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PEAC Museum, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 2023 – photos Bernhard Strauss

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excerpt

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La logique fantôme (Ätherische Logik)

In parallel with this sound presence, nine short printed texts (translated from French into German and English) on a sheet of paper are made available at the junction of each room. These texts are a proposal of coincidences. Like an non-explanatory and incomplete notice to the sound work, each text develops in a few words a notion linked to listening and to the experience of visiting this resonant space. 
Translations by Elke Albrecht.

PEAC Museum, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 2023 – photos Bernhard Strauss 

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about

– video reportage directed by M. Martin-Humpert, with interview of Lea Altner, Baden TV Süd, Nov. 2023, German
– text by Dietrich Roeschmann, press article Badische Zeitung, Nov. 2023, German

postal cards
multiple editions, in French

Quant-à-soi (3 fragments), 2006
Le bout de la langue, 2003
Mon possible, 1998
Le sens de la mesure, 1997

5 € each + 1,15 € (postage)
order here: contact or sumup store (online payment)

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Quant-à-soi (fragments 1-2-3), published in 2006 by Transpalette-Emmetrop, Bourges

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Le bout de la langue – published in 2003                                                                                                 Mon possible – published in 1998

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Le sens de la mesure – published in 1997 by École des Beaux-Arts de Caen

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Mes écoutes
book
2022

éditions B42, Paris
collection Sentiers directed by Mathilde Villeneuve
12 € + postage
order here: in bookshop or éditions B42

Les heures creuses 

French
10,7 x 16,9 cm
176 pages

texts by Dominique Petitgand
graphic design deValence

diffusion and distribution
LES BELLES LETTRES
ISBN : 978-2-490077-66-3

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First issue of the collection Sentiers directed by Mathilde Villeneuve,
Mes écoutes is a project started by Dominique Petitgand in 2004,
in parallel with his work of sound creation. Gathering texts unpublished
or having been initially diffused in exhibitions or during performances,
this work constitutes its most complete version. 

Through these 170 short texts, Dominique Petitgand describes how,
in various situations of his daily life, he listens. Similar to a crossing
of places and times, this evocation of sounds in their absence constitutes
a possible fiction around a few themes: the course of a day from waking
to sleeping, domestic or urban listening, travel, the rules of conversation,
inner music, or sound obsession. For each of the situations described,
the context, the moment, the circumstance but also the mental or physical
disposition of the person listening, are as important, if not more so, than
the description of the sound itself. This collection thus makes room
for the unrepresentable sound and prefers to shift the reflection
on its effects and its reception rather than on its description.

It thus concentrates on a point of detail, resonances, resemblances,
or is sometimes satisfied with simply stating a question.
Particular attention is then paid to what is indirect, is at a distance,
or is revealed after the fact.

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excerpts

Les voix blanches / Light voices (map)
wallpaper, French or English version
220 x 155 cm
2022

multiple edition of 20 copies (with certificate)
price and order here: contact or Annex, Tlön Projects

solo exhibition L’écoute flottante, gb agency, Paris, 2022

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The printed work is mounted halfway up on the surface of a wall.
It can be read as a giant map.

Once I finish sound editing, the transcription makes the text visible and formal. It’s something that comes afterward, and can take many forms. This map is one of those forms. Neither linear nor vertical like the transcriptions that I publish in catalogs, this time it’s spatial, panoramic, geographic, like a map that fills the entirety of an enormous white page.
Translation in English by Miles Hankin, Chet Wiener and Marisol Rodriguez.

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gb agency, 2022 – photo Aurélien Mole

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detail English version 

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Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy, 2022, French version – photo D.P.

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about

– interview with Églantine Mercader, on the occasion of exhibition gb agency, 2022

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Soupirs
sound installation with 1 speaker and vinyl
2022

solo exhibition L’écoute flottante, gb agency, Paris, 2022

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A vinyl record is placed on a turntable, itself placed on a base containing a speaker. The disc has two sides. The triggering of its listening is free.

Soupirs is a suggested accompaniment, an intermittent musical presence, either in a corner or out in the center of a space, like a fountain or a clock that chimes from time to time. It doesn’t operate on schedule, but rather on demand, for a fixed duration (the length of a vinyl record).  It’s a musical ambiance to which one pays full attention or not, it can be ignored or not, with long silences between notes.
The length of the silences is unequal, making the flow of time irregular, wobbly and arbitrary. 

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excerpt

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photos Aurélien Mole

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about

– interview with Églantine Mercader, on the occasion of exhibition gb agency, 2022

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L’écoute flottante
sound installation with 16 speakers
2022

L’écoute flottante (The suspended listening)
version with 2 screens for French and English subtitles
solo exhibition L’écoute flottante, gb agency, Paris, 2022

Les heures creuses 

On a large surface, 16 speakers are fixed to the wall at different heights. 
Multiple voices mix in a mural of a conversation. In diminishing order, words are fragmented and truncated —from sentence to word to syllable until ultimately to breathing, snickers, coughs, humming and exhalations. As with the speakers, the voices are spread across the wall in a constellation and circulate from one place to another according to their own twists and turns.
The short sentences sound like excerpts from stories, conversations and other multiple contexts. The voices appear in a void and are punctuated with sporadic silences. Each silence, an abrupt and sudden halt, is loaded with the tension that emerges upon the suspension of human presence and its possible return.  

version with subtitles on 2 screens

Two adjacent monitors, one for French, one for English, transcribe synchronously the collection of audible words. But only those that are intelligible. At the beginning I only intended to provide an English translation, but I realized that a visual transcription of the phrases was useful for everyone, including Francophones. So I translated from French to French, and focused on the gap between listening and reading. The appearance on screen of what one is hearing becomes a hook for hearing, a support, at the risk of redundancy or dissonance. 
Translation in English by Miles Hankin, Chet Wiener and Marisol Rodriguez.

excerpt

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photos Aurélien Mole

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about

– interview with Églantine Mercader, on the occasion of exhibition gb agency, 2022

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Credits of the works and the website

sound pieces
recorded, edited, mixed, spatialized by Dominique Petitgand
musics composed and played by Dominique Petitgand

with the voices of
Dominique Ané, Camille Auvy, Colin Auvy, Louise Goutin, Bénédicte Petitgand,
Marie-Henriette Petitgand, Liza Maria Riveros, Paoulo Riveros, Norbert

and
Dario Alvarez, George Caruzzo, François Gobillot, Monique Gobillot, Jean Petitgand,
Édit Zakal

with the oral translations of
Éric Baudelaire, Peter O’Brien, Marta Dansie, Daniel Darius Oskui, Ruth Gamper,
Miles Hankin, Marina Melancorteci, Christine Melchiors, Sophie Nys, Massimo Prandini,
Tatsanai Wongpisethkul

with the written translations of
Michael Angland, Jean-Charles Beaumont, Carlo Fossati, Miles Hankin, Ruth Kaaserer,
Nicolas Sergère, Chet Wiener

with occasional musical participations of
Dominique Ané, Antoine Carolus, Christine Ott, Marc Sens

with occasional sound participations of
Hervé Birolini, Stéphane Janin, Fabrice Laureau, Yann Tiersen, Jean-Pierre Viazzi 
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structure of the website
in collaboration with Charlotte Imbault
thanks to David Guez 
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In or in front a landscape
sound performance with 2 or several speakers
2006/…

outdoor session or from indoors
duration 30 or 45 minutes or more

in front of the mountain: Les trois temps, Chapelle Saint-Jacques – Trente + 1, Médiathèque de Saint-Gaudens, 2023
in front of the street: François Villon public library, Paris, 2019
in front of the sea : La voix dans le vide, Route panoramique, Villa Brugère, Arromanches-lès-Bains, 2017
in front of a lake: Un faible pour la lac, Bois de sculptures, CIAP, Île-de-Vassivière, 2015
in a public garden: Festival GMEM, Campagne Pastré park, Marseille, 2013
in a public garden: abbaye de Maubuisson park, Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, 2009
in front of a lake: Un faible pour la lac, Festival Ondulations, Transat Vidéo, Saint-Laurent-de-Tergatte, 2006

version with 16 speakers and 6 listening situations
in a public garden: Program Habiter le lieu, Prieuré St-Cosme, 2021 (cur. Anne-Laure Chamboissier) 

With this principle of a listening session in or facing a landscape, several works, in different formats (number of speakers) and durations (more or less long), can be and have already been broadcast: Les trois temps, La voix dans le vide, Un faible pour le lac…

outdoor listening session

The audience is seated, gathered in front of several speakers
and facing or in a landscape. The listening is stereo, distracted
or focused, environmental and narrative and based on the contemplation and the immersion in the place. 
The voices, the sound and musical elements, the silences, maintain a relationship of rupture, dialogue and coincidence with the sounds naturally or accidentally produced by the place and
the distance.
Several spoken, musical and landscape sound pieces following each other up give rise to a long open and fragmented story.

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1 abbaye de Maubuisson, 2009 – photo D.P. / 2 St-Laurent-de-Tergatte, 2006 – photo D.P. / 3 Île-de-Vassivière, 2015 – photo Muriel Meunier 

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from indoors

The session can also take place indoors, facing a cityscape or landscape, with privileged views of the distance, the sea, the mountains or the city.

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Club de plongée YCPW, Villa Brugère, Arromanches-lès-Bains, 2017 – photos Madeleine Decaux

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Médiathèque de Saint-Gaudens, Chapelle Saint-Jacques, 2023 –  photos Édouard Decam

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François Villon public library, Paris, 2019 – photo Philippe Diaz

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version with 16 speakers and 6 listening situations

Partly live (improvised mixing from a central point at certain times) and partly fixed, this sound action in the landscape uses a set of 10 speakers on pedestal, distributed by 2 or by 4 according to different points of view, and offers several listening situations: individual or collective, mobile or fixed, sitting on benches, deckchairs or cushions, in fee, short or long durations.

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Prieuré St-Cosme-demeure de Ronsard, Tours – photos D.P. except 12-16 Anne-Laure Chamboissier and 7-17 Xavier Selva

Rez-de-chaussée
CD
2000

musical label Ici, d’ailleurs… / BNA-BBOT, IDA017
15 € + postage
order here: contact or to order directly online

Les heures creuses 

1.   Dimanche
2.   Perruches / presse-purée
3.   Soleil
4.   Risques
5.   Maison
6.   Disputes
7.   Chien
8.   Faillite
9.   Parfois
10. Mariage
11. Rue
12. Neige
13. Oui
14. Non
15. Suré
16. Bouteille
17. Biscuit
18. Souvenir
19. Marraine
20. Tapotements / tuba / mer
21. Guerre
22. Dire
23. Lamentable
24. Compliqué
25. Cagoule
26. Violence
27. Questions / porte-clef

extrait

sound pieces by Dominique Petitgand
musics composed and played by Dominique Petitgand
2000

based on interviews conducted by residents of Brussels
as part of the projet Bruxelles Nous Appartient / Brussels Behoort Ons Toe
with Deux temps trois mouvements, Radiolab, Algorythm
and Bruxelles 2000
 
with the participation of Antoine Carolus (Tuba)
 
mastering: Uwe Teichert / Electric City
graphic design: Speculoos and Dominique Petitgand

(p) & (c) Dominique Petitgand / Ici, d’ailleurs… 2000

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