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book Installations (documents)

Installations (documents)
book
2009

published on the occasion of the solo exhibition Quelqu’un est tombé, abbaye de Maubuisson, 2009
éditions MF
20 € + postage
order here: in bookshop or contact or to order directly online (secure payment)

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bilingual French/English
240 pages
22 x 17 cm

skeches, descriptions, transcriptions, notes by Dominique Petitgand
interviews Dominique Petitgand with Vanessa Desclaux, Élodie Royer and Yoann Gourmel, Guillaume Constantin, Marinella Paderni
English translation by Jean-Charles Beaumont, Miles Hankin, Chet Wiener
color pictures
graphic design by Elie Kongs and Dominique Petitgand

co-edition abbaye de Maubuisson/FRAC Normandie/FRAC Lorraine/Confort Moderne
distribution Pollen
ISBN : 978-2-9157-9441-0

This monography dedicated to Dominique Petitgand’ sound installations – with a selection of pieces from 1994 to 2009 – shows how the artist himself attempted to document his own listening and sound creation practice. Various forms of representation (sketches, exhibitions views, descriptions, text-pictures, transcriptions) go with a choice of notes and interviews.

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excerpts

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Texts

writings with translation

La logique fantôme / Ätherische Logik, text-work, translation by Elke Albrecht, 2023, Fr./Ger./En.
Mes écoutes, book B42, 2022, Fr. + My listenings, excerpts in magazines and catalogues, 2004/2022, En.
Inven / ter la suite, DEARS magazine n°3, oct., translation by DEARS, 2021, Fr./En.
Le pouvoir des pointes / Power of Spikes, for Tesla, musical creation by Hervé Birolini and François Donato, translation by Adelaïde Pralon, 2015/2019, Fr./En.
Les liens invisibles (à propos de) / The invisible links (about), book CIAP Vassivière, translation by John Tittensor, 2015, Fr./En.
État des lieux / Staring into space, website cataloguemagazine.com, 2010, Fr./En
Les pièces manquantes / The missing pieces, slideshow + book EMBA/Manet Gennevilliers, translation by John Tittensor, 2006/2010, Fr./En.
Notes, book Installations (documents), éditions MF, translation by Jean-Charles Beaumont, 2004/2009, Fr./En

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Interviews

interviews with translation

with

Marc Jacquin, translation by Juliet Powys, catalogue exhibition L’écoute essaimée, Musée Réattu/Semaine 25.22, 2022, Fr./En.
Églantine Mercader, translation by Miles Hankin, press release exhibition L’écoute flottante, gb agency, 2022, Fr./En.
Églantine Mercader, translation by Miles Hankin, press release exhibition Le fil conducteur, gb agency, 2017, Fr./En.
Vanessa Desclaux, translation by Vanessa Desclaux, book Installations (documents), éditions MF, 2009, Fr/En.
Christophe Gallois, catalogue exhibition The Space of Words, MUDAM, 2009, Fr/En.
Guillaume Constantin, translation by Jean-Charles Beaumont, 2008, book Installations (documents), éditions MF, 2009, Fr./En.
Christophe Gallois, catalogue exhibition Neutre Intense, Maison Pop, 2008, Fr./En.
Élodie Royer et Yoann Gourmel, translation by Miles Hankin, 2008, Art Basel + book Installations (documents), 2009, Fr./En.
Pierre Bal-Blanc, translation by Dean Inkster, 2008, catalogue Reversibility, Mousse Publishing, 2013, Fr./En.
Olivier de Montpezat, catalogue exhibition Best Of Kunstpreis Schuman, 2007, Fr./Ger.
Sabine Gamper, translation by Viola Schmitt, catalogue exhibition Con-Sens, Galleria Museo, 2006, Ger./It./En.
Marinella Paderni, translation by Jean-Charles Beaumont, magazine Tema Celeste, 2006 + book Installations (documents), 2009, En./It./Fr.
Guillaume Désanges (2), book Notes, voix, entretiens, Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers/ENSBA, 2003, Fr./En.
Guillaume Désanges (1), book Notes, voix, entretiens, Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers/ENSBA, 2003, Fr./En.
Yvane Chapuis, translation by Simon Pleasance, book Textes, sons, gb agency, 2001, Fr./En.

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Special publications

special publications
notes, transcriptions, postal cards

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programmes
transcriptions
in French
2023

Les trois temps – partie 1
Les trois temps – partie 2
Les trois temps – partie 3

on the website my own documenta
notes on work in progress
in French
2020

mercredi traduction
squelette du mardi
bureau du lundi

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in newspapers
transcriptions with translations
2004/2006

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Corriere dell’ Alto Adige, 7 juillet 2006, Fr./Ger./It.
as part of the exhibition Con-Sens, AR/GE Kunst, Galleria Museo, Bolzano/Bozen, 2006

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Neue Südtiroler Tageszeitung, 31 mai 2006, Fr./Ger./It.
as part of the exhibition Con-Sens, AR/GE Kunst, Galleria Museo, Bolzano/Bozen, 2006

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The Nation, 25 juillet 2004, Fr./En./Thaï
as part of the exhibition Here and Now, AARA Foundation, About Café, Bangkok, 2004

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postal cards
in French
1998/2006

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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

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Expectoration à la clef

Expectoration à la clef
sound installation with 2 speakers
2002

solo exhibition La tête la première, FRAC Haute Normandie, Sotteville-lès-Rouen, 209

Expectoration à la clef (Extra expectoration thrown in) – version with English subtitles
Open Studios, Les Ateliers New Yorkais, ISCP, New York, 2005

Les heures creuses

Two speakers on pedestals.
On the speaker on the right, one voice: a man, the story of a trying, panting race; he is gasping for breath and has a pain in the side. Breathing and sentences are interrupted, taken back up and manipulated by the musical sound (whistling and shaken frequencies) while being emitted on the speaker on he left.

version with subtitles

Expectoration à la clef (Extra expectoration thrown in).
Beside, a computer screen connected to the speakers shows the written translation in English synchronously with the voice. English translation by Chet Wiener.

excerpt

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photos D.P.

Il y a

Il y a
sound piece for headphones or 2 speakers
2005

Il y a (Der er) – bilingual version French/Danish
exhibition Always crashing in the same car, Galleri Susanne Ottesen, Copenhagen, 2005 (cur. Jasper Sebastian Stürup)

Les heures creuses

bilingual version with headphones

Il y a (Der er) is a bilingual and new version of the installation Il y a, ensuite.

In this version, diffused in the gallery in front of a window that reveals the city and through headphones, two important elements of the original piece are missing: the music is gone, replaced by an urban background with the wind in a tree, but also the voice of the woman, replaced with a new voice of a translator, a woman who speaks Danish, translates, comments and resumes indirectly the child’s speech.
The two voices, in French and in Danish, staggered and in turn, shell various fragments (panorama, close and distant details) of an indeterminate (between imagination and memory) landscape.
Oral translation in Danish by Christine Melchiors.

photo D.P.

excerpt

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Quelqu’un par terre

Quelqu’un par terre
sound installation with 7 speakers
2005

solo exhibition Un soulagement, La Compagnie, Marseille, 2009 (cur. Paul-Emmanuel Odin)
solo exhibition Quelqu’un par terre, L’Arsenic, Lausanne, 2007 (cur. Marie Jeanson)
solo exhibition Quelqu’un par terre, Transpalette-Emmetrop, Bourges, 2005 (cur. Jérôme Poret)

version with 11 speakers
solo exhibition Quelqu’un par terre, Nuit Blanche, St Roch church , Paris, 2009 (cur. Michel Brière)

Quelqu’un par terre (Someone on the ground) – version with English subtitles
exhibition Stutter, Level 2 gallery, Tate Modern, London, 2009 (cur. Vanessa Desclaux and Nicholas Cullinan)
solo exhibition Quelqu’un par terre, gb agency, Paris, 2007

Les heures creuses

version with 11 speakers

The installation called Quelqu’un par terre is made up of three sound parts which are secretly linked together (one sound concealing another) and emitted in three open adjacent spaces, with different acoustics and characteristics.
In this installation deployed in several spaces chairs splinters hide raised voices. The visitor has to move from a space to another to listen to these voices which can only be heard once some sills crossed. Then, this phenomenon happens in the visitors’ ear: a metallic chair falling in turn produces a sequence of words. The visitors movement permits to discover the two terms of the binomial speech/noises. This movement keeps the visitor free to chose the listening point: on one side, on the other, or in the middle. When voices appear, a narrative emerges, links are revealed.
Each sentence is linked to a chair splinter. Each of the chairs splinters is linked to a sentence which has exactly the same duration, the same progression, the same cutting : “ta-ta-ta-ta” = “quel-qu’un-par-terre”, “ta-ta-ta-ta-ta” = “tout-est-ou-bli-é”, which creates a succession of two sided sequences. Mimesis is only revealed by the fragments precise choice and an editing operation, a combination disassociated during the installation. Different spaces and diffusion systems used for each sound accentuate this disassociation. In the first large opened space with the resonating acoustics height speakers on the ground diffuse the chairs splinters, diagonally, on both aisle sides. In the last space, more confined, with muffled acoustics (the final chapel), only one speaker on a pedestal diffuses voices (comments, digressions about a body lying on the ground).
It produces a duality between the visitors relation to what they perceive: in a side (the nave) they can cross a sound field, in the other side (the chapel), they can move away or closer from a localized point. The first space strong resonance produces an echo, a second sound extending each chairs splinter, sounding through the silence. And the visitors keep earing it even once they move away from the field. And by the synchronism set, when they move close to the voices, the echo becomes the sentences’one, associated as a shadow.
A third sound is staged in a third intermediate space: the wind. Registered by a stormy day, the wind squeezes in the space, under doors, and make architecture sing. Unlike the two others it’s an ongoing sound which fluctuate and insinuate, never interrupted with silences.
One possible summary of Quelqu’un par terre would be: a talking chair, sentences fall, the wind which sings.

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Nuit Blanche, St Roch church, Paris, 2009 – photos Julien Crépieux

In this version of the installation, the four speakers for the metal chairs clanking are in a sloping position in a first large space. As for the voices, they are emitted from a mezzanine which, for the occasion, has been turned into a muffled and protected space. The wind is emitted from behind invisible wings.

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La Compagnie, Marseille, 2009 – photos D.P.po, La Compagnie, Marseille, 2009 – photos D.P

Here the installation is located in a former atomic shelter, a network of nine very sonorous underground spaces, very reverberant, in a row and linked together by one opening only. Metal sounds bounce from wall to wall and mark the way to the hidden voices. Only the last space, where the voices are, abutment of the tour, is muffled (insulation) and plunged in darkness.

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L’Arsenic, Lausanne, 2007 – photos D.P.Lausanne, 2007 – photos D.P.exposition personnelle, L’Arsenic, Lausanne, 2007 – photos D.P.

This first version of the installation takes up a whole building, on three floors opened the ones onto the others (second and third floors used as gangways).
On the ground floor, a reverberating space, there are four speakers hanging on the walls for the metal chairs clanking. On the second floor, in a side room, there is a concealed speaker: the wind snakes its way all over the building. On the third floor, a muffled space, there is a speaker for the voices (which can be heard only once upstairs) which is mounted on a pedestal.

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Transpalette, Emmetrop, Bourges, 2005 – photos D.P.

version with subtitles

Quelqu’un par terre (Someone on the ground).
In this version for non-French-speaking countries, the sound stays the same (voices in French).
A first part, using two speakers mounted near the floor against the walls of the entrance, allows the sound of the wind to be heard. A second part uses four speakers set up high against the walls of the main large and sonorous space. Like echoes, sharp sounds of the metal chair broken with silences are being heard bouncing from one wall to another. Farther away, in a more limited space that is being discovered in a second time, a third part emits the voices from a unique speaker mounted on a pedestal and in an indirect position.
When the visitor hears the voices, a story appears and connections are revealed. Each sentence is associated with a clank, like a shade, a twin sound, an echo.
On a small side, fourth part of the installation, intermediate step before the voices, a video screen hanging on a wall at eye level shows subtitles, a synchronous written translation of the words being heard.
English translation by Miles Hanki.

Level 2 gallery, Tate Modern, London, 2009 – photos D.P.

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version with subtitles

In this version with translation of the installation, the space has first been cut into four parts. A sonorous space (first room for the clanking), a passageway (corridor for the translation subtitles), a small muffled room plunged in darkness (for the voices) and the wings (offices, for the concealed wind).

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gb agency, Paris, 2007- photos D.P.

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about

– texts by Anne-Lou Vicente and Dominique Petitgand, Revue Volume n°1, 2010, Fr./En.
– interview with Vanessa Desclaux in book Installations (documents), 2009, En.
– text by Kim West, press article artforum.com, New York, December 2006, En.
– text by Manuel Cirauqui, press article Lapiz n°229, Madrid, January 2006, Span.

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Etat liquide / Télépathie

État liquide / Télépathie
sound installation with 5 speakers
2001

exhibition City Sonics, Transcultures, Beaux-Arts Museum, Mons, 2007

État liquide / Télépathie (Telepathy) – version with English subtitles
exhibition Homo Ludens Act III, Motive Gallery, Amsterdam, 2012

Les heures creuses

The installation État liquide / Télépathie connects two acoustic perspectives.
Overlapping the inside and outside parts of a museum, four speakers set up on the floor of the landing and turned upwards emit the musical piece called État liquide (the repeated melody of water drops and metallic hammering).
Inside a glass airlock, at the entrance of the building, a speaker on a pedestal emits the sound piece called Télépathie y, for one voice only (a woman talks on the phone with another person who cannot be heard).
The two acoustic perspectives add each other on each time a visitor steps into the museum.

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BAM, Mons, 2007 – photos D.P.

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version with subtitles

État liquide / Télépathie (Telepathy).
In this version for non-French-speaking countries, the sound stays the same
(voices in French).
In the first part of the space, four speakers are set up on the floor irregularly
and turned upwards. They emit the musical piece. Further, in another part
of the gallery, at the end of the exhibition’ movement, a speaker on a pedestal
emits the voice. The two acoustic perspectives add each other when we access
the second space with the voice.
Presented in the form of subtitles on a screen set up on a wall, the translation
of the speech is the third part of the installation, and functions like an interface
between the two sound layers, between the listening and the reading.
English translation by Miles Hankin.