Category: Non classé

The installation called Je parle is located in a space all in one piece with a very reverberating acoustics.
The first two speakers, standing on the floor and turned the other way round to face the wall, emit elementary and long musical sequences. They spread out thanks to the strong resonance of the place and fill up the whole space.
In between those sequences, alternately and as an echo, the two other speakers, each one set on a pedestal and turned towards an alcove, emit voices from the other side of the space to which they turn their backs (the middle part being left empty). There is a series of very short sentences, broken with long silences, with restrained and impeded words, most of the time reduced to only one word: two children refusing to talk to each other.
Each alcove, which for the occasion is acoustically insulated, becomes a muffled partition which dissociates each utterance into two faces: the word and its echo.

version with subtitles

Je parle (I talk).
In this new presentation of the piece in a bigger space, the installation doesn’t increase its surface. It takes place in the center of the space while the emptiness around becomes more important.
In this version with subtitles, the sound stays the same (voices in French). 
Beside, in a window gangway, a screen which can be seen from the street, shows subtitles, a synchronous written translation of the words being heard in the distance.
English translation by Chet Wiener.
 

outdoor installation with 7 speakers

Je siffle au bord du quai mixes two works originally separate Je siffle and Au bord du quai.
This installation takes place outdoor in a wood near a lake with seven speakers fixed on seven trees and diffuses a nearly musical dotted line, an extended succession, interrupted by silences, of a long frayed whistling’s fragments.
A long broken whistling in search of its own melody, a primitive musical improvised speech created from its very self, moving forward at the mercy of melodious snippets, of suspended notes, of beginnings, suspensions, repetitions, hesitations, returns, variations.
The whistled sequences are diffused, one after the other, on five speakers, going from one to the other, the same way a person would do while walking in the wood around the trees, without any other logic than that of the inner thought process.
Alternately to whistling, the two other speakers diffuse a series of recordings, at the edge of the platform, passings of full speed trains, and the feeling that someone cuts your head off. These abrasive sequences, punctuated, flung, held back, by ultra-short percussive sounds, comparable to manipulations of glassware seem to happen almost by chance, right in the middle of the whistling which they come to perturb, awaken, interfere with.
This installation which can be heard from the far as a discreet and discontinuous presence requires a listener in motion, in search of the sounds, of their appearances, of their displacements (from one speaker to the other), the sounds perceived from afar or nearby.
 

version indoor

The idea of the piece comes from an habit that I have: when I have to visit a place, I whistle while moving, I improvise some melodies then I listen the silence, as a first tracking, scouting, a first measurement.
For this first version of the piece, the installation found its rhythm with the interconnection of the sounds of the whistling and the interruptions of the train. The installation takes place in the two spaces of the gallery, leaves the spaces empty (floors and centers unoccupied), only the speakers occupy the periphery of the walls. It plays with the particularly reverberating acoustics of the spaces (no isolation device has been installed on the floors or the walls, the space is blank, raw), the sounds resonate, each short sequence is followed by its echo, the sounds hit against the walls, bounce, misleading us about their source. 

Au bord du du quai – version with 2 speakers

Au bord du quai is located on two speakers hung from one of the walls. We can hear a series of recordings, at the edge of the platform, passings of full speed trains, and the feeling that someone cuts your head off. Abrasive sequences, punctuated, flung, held back, by ultra-short percussive sounds, comparable to manipulations of glassware. These micro-structured sequences, interrupted by very long silences, seem to happen almost by chance, right in the middle of the empty space which they come to perturb, awaken, interfere with.

The installation Proche, très proche, first version of Les liens invisibles, is a version with noises of the piece Quant-à-soi, here, showed outside, in a park. It consists of three separate sound levels.
The first level consists of natural sounds from the space, heard in the distance.
The installation is a dotted piece which lets the surroundings exist. The two other levels are produced by a set of nine speakers.
A first set of height speakers, arranged in arched circle, placed on the ground and facing up, form a belt that faces us once entered the wood plot and had few steps. They diffuses a series of noises, interrupted with silences, which move from one speaker to another. Each of these sounds is a gesture, a very brief action occurred on household objects in different ways. They follow a logic we can’t understand.
Further, the center of the plot, a nineth speaker is placed on a pedestal at ear height. It diffuses a voice. This voice is hidden, we can only hear it once we crossed the first barrier of speakers. His discovery depends on our travel, our listening. Advancing, we can discover, more or less loudly and clearly by the distance, a series of short sentences, interrupted also with silences that are distributed exactly synchronous with the noise from the first four speakers (this synchronism can hide the voice: for every sentence is a noise). When that voice appears, links are revealed, the story can begin : a woman speaks, she speaks about invisible links she has trouble to define. 

version with subtitles

Proche, très proche (Close, very close).
In this version for non-French-speaking countries, the sound stays the same (voices in French).
In this indoor version, the first set of four speakers, arranged in an arched circle, placed on the ground and facing up, form a belt that faces you once you entered the gallery.
Further, the center of a smaller space, a fifth speaker is placed on a pedestal at ear height.  
On entering the small area, the step of the way that leads from the sounds to the (French) voice, a video screen on the wall diffuses the translation written and synchronous from the words.
English translation by Miles Hankin.

version with subtitles

Itinéraire (Itinerary). This installation connects three spaces and a central point.
Three speakers, mounted on a pedestal and divided out in three open and neighbouring spaces, emit one voice broken up into three units. A long sentence (the story of a journey and its many stopping places) is cut out into short fragments (unlike most of the other installations, it is not broken with silences) and successively shared out onto the three speakers, thus giving rise to three distinct acoustic perspectives. The different listening spots, movements and positions of the listener determine what is close, what is next to, and what is distant. 
At a strategic place, which is central and equidistant between the three speakers, a video screen hanging on a wall shows the written translation of the words, which are here put back together into a retrieved unit. 
English translation by Miles Hankin.

The installation with 4 speakers called Les ballons is located in a huge and empty space.
Four speakers set up in the corners of the space emit the sounds of balls bouncing against different materials. Those sounds make the architecture sound, represent the distances, and define the listening temporality through back-and-forth phenomena, bouncing ones, and plays with the materials and movements created all over the space. The barn is a porous shelter that lets the outside seep in. The silences between the sound sequences, hollows and rhythmic punctuations, are as many inverted frames enabling the place, beyond the walls, to keep on making itself hear. 
Hit the ball hard, stubbornly, alone in a huge and empty place. Les ballons is a fiction with this simple story: somebody is playing with a ball and kicking it against the walls. A split which can be also evoke the loneliness, obstinacy that the game and the pleasure to dialog with a place.