Capsule temporelle d’un premier jour de grève

Time capsule of a first day of strike. Performance for 9 vocalists, performed by the voice company Eranos, on January 16, 2020 at 6:30 pm, at the BBB art center, Toulouse.

Preamble of the recording

A performance in the context of my exhibition at the BBB center d’art was planned for a long time on December 5, 2019 at 6:30 pm. However, a large-scale social movement was spreading across the country and this date turned out to be the first day of a national inter-professional strike that the art center team decided to follow. The performance was cancelled and postponed to a later date. Rather than simply moving the planned performance, I proposed a new protocol thought from the context of this cancellation. I asked all the members of the team to make a sound recording of their activity and immediate environment precisely at 6:30 pm on December 5, 2019, for as long as they wished. I did the same on my side. In total, 9 recordings were made, ranging from 3 to 42 minutes in length.

Performance

Each recording is entrusted, without processing or editing, to a member of the Eranos voice company.

Each vocalist is positioned in the exhibition space close to the element of the work Les supports (scénographie d’un mobilier de bureau) relative to the team member whose recording he or she is performing.

Each vocalist is equipped with a portable audio player and a headphone or an earphone in order to listen to the recording for him or herself, without the public present, nor the other musicians being able to hear it. The performance then consists of each musician listening to the recording and simultaneously either translating the sounds as faithfully as possible (timbre, dynamics, etc.), or describing them orally, or a mix of both. Only the voice is used as the source instrument, but it can be extended or transformed if necessary by any type of tool (megaphone, membrane, etc.), as long as the voice remains the main source of performance. In any case, the possible device used in complement must remain summary.

The performance begins at 6:30 pm sharp. All audio files are played simultaneously. The performance is over when the translation of the longest recording is finished (i.e. a total duration of 42 minutes).

Thus, the performance begins with all vocalists interpreting simultaneously, and then the number of vocalists decreases as the recordings played are completed. When a vocalist has finished reading/performing his or her recording, he or she remains positioned near the furniture associated with it and waits in silence until the end of the performance. When the performance is over, the vocalists leave their positions at the same time.