Category: Non classé

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.

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.
 

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.

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.
 

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.

composition, edit and live mix by Dominique Petitgand
oral English and live translation by Marie Losier et Federico Marulanda

composition and edit by Dominique Petitgand
with the voice of Marta Dansie

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.