La Voix Humaine
Program of performances in 4 parts
Church Saint-Eustache, March - June 2015, Paris
Artists: Agnès Geoffray, Ekaterina Vasilyeva & Hanna Zubkova, Valentin Lewandowsky, Julien Creuzet & Julien Marine, Joao Torres, Emma Dusong
La Voix Humaine is a program of vocal performances devoted to the potentiality of voice and a form it acquires in a symbolically charged space that is supposed to be a medium of a message. The voice as a tool, measure and object is manifested in narrated, whispered and sung stories. What happens with a voice in the space of a word, silent and performed?
As philosopher and artist Irena Tomažin states, the voice “brings a dead God back to life, and makes him present”. One of the most enigmatic human possessions, a voice, begotten from nihility, tends to be a very vivid entity, almost mighty in its performativity. A word is conceived by voice, and the world as a consequence. The voice defines the space: it resonates even when it is no more there. It determines time by duration. It confirms to be a conductor and a sign of truth in the axis of a spatio-temporal system.
1st part: Agnès Geoffray, Valentin Lewandowski, Ekaterina Vasilyeva & Hanna Zubkova
Agnès Geoffray presents a collection of different versions of life of Saint Agnès. She classifies them by a number of characters, the legend of Saint Agnès is constantly inventing itself in the course of reading. From simple phrase to the elaboration of entire narration, the life of Saint Agnes expands and becomes more complex, revealing simulacra, usual to myths and legends.
In performance H by Valentin Lewandowski, a person replays his recorded speech on a vinyl disc. The discourse is about the letter h: starting from remarks related to psychological mechanisms of the pronunciation of h, it gradually comes to the question of the absence of sonority in French.
Ekaterina Vasilyeva and Hanna Zubkova work with specific contexts. At the intersection of « gesture - text - place » they form polysemic chronotopes from decomposed fragments. A text turns into a plastic element, while a place (or, more generally, context) becomes a subject. For La Voix Humaine, in the place of the one who speaks is either an intermediate of the other’s voice or addresses someone who is simultaneously absent and present, Ekaterina and Hanna propose a performance in a form of dialogued recital, a meta-narration, where they play themselves, taking as a starting point a phantom of Jean Cocteau’s play.
2nd part: Julien Creuzet & Julien Marine
On the 21st of April artist Julien Creuzet and counter-tenor Julien Marine present their performance Opera-archipel, le chagrin de Marine (…). The creation develops an idea of a long-term project by Julien Creuzet, Opera-archipel. A search of contemporary exoticism nourishes new forms of opera fragmented in texts, sounds, images and gestures. Caribbean by origin, Creuzet is profoundly influenced by the notion of archipelago as a structure for artistic creation. The poems based on his observations and experiences serve as a score for the voice of Julien Marine.
3rd part : João Vieira Torres
João Vieira Torres’ narrative performance Aurora is composed of a series of little tales, told by the artist around a dream film. Indeed, it all started with a dream where he told his mother that he was looking for the children whom his grand-mother Aurora, a midwife and healer, had brought into the world for more than forty years in the deep Sertão in the Northeastern Brazil, in the confines of a scorched earth that rain has not touched for years.
Anchoring in the tradition of storytelling which associates personal diary and travel journal, the performance crosses family memories and collective History. It suggests how over and over present in completion require to rewrite the past.
4th part : Emma Dusong
The Emma Dusong’s work titled Valise focuses on transformations, transitions which change the identity of an individual. The song Irav é, wrote and composed by the artist, is singed in Armenian language. It was chosen for its musicality: even if we do not know the language, we can understand it intuitively through the emotion of the melody. “The melody is dulcet, vertically, upright, as a decision-making linking thinking and walking”, as the artist explains. At the end of the song, the voice slides into the suitcase and then, in turn, starts to sing.
Program of performances in 4 parts
Church Saint-Eustache, March - June 2015, Paris
Artists: Agnès Geoffray, Ekaterina Vasilyeva & Hanna Zubkova, Valentin Lewandowsky, Julien Creuzet & Julien Marine, Joao Torres, Emma Dusong
La Voix Humaine is a program of vocal performances devoted to the potentiality of voice and a form it acquires in a symbolically charged space that is supposed to be a medium of a message. The voice as a tool, measure and object is manifested in narrated, whispered and sung stories. What happens with a voice in the space of a word, silent and performed?
As philosopher and artist Irena Tomažin states, the voice “brings a dead God back to life, and makes him present”. One of the most enigmatic human possessions, a voice, begotten from nihility, tends to be a very vivid entity, almost mighty in its performativity. A word is conceived by voice, and the world as a consequence. The voice defines the space: it resonates even when it is no more there. It determines time by duration. It confirms to be a conductor and a sign of truth in the axis of a spatio-temporal system.
1st part: Agnès Geoffray, Valentin Lewandowski, Ekaterina Vasilyeva & Hanna Zubkova
Agnès Geoffray presents a collection of different versions of life of Saint Agnès. She classifies them by a number of characters, the legend of Saint Agnès is constantly inventing itself in the course of reading. From simple phrase to the elaboration of entire narration, the life of Saint Agnes expands and becomes more complex, revealing simulacra, usual to myths and legends.
In performance H by Valentin Lewandowski, a person replays his recorded speech on a vinyl disc. The discourse is about the letter h: starting from remarks related to psychological mechanisms of the pronunciation of h, it gradually comes to the question of the absence of sonority in French.
Ekaterina Vasilyeva and Hanna Zubkova work with specific contexts. At the intersection of « gesture - text - place » they form polysemic chronotopes from decomposed fragments. A text turns into a plastic element, while a place (or, more generally, context) becomes a subject. For La Voix Humaine, in the place of the one who speaks is either an intermediate of the other’s voice or addresses someone who is simultaneously absent and present, Ekaterina and Hanna propose a performance in a form of dialogued recital, a meta-narration, where they play themselves, taking as a starting point a phantom of Jean Cocteau’s play.
2nd part: Julien Creuzet & Julien Marine
On the 21st of April artist Julien Creuzet and counter-tenor Julien Marine present their performance Opera-archipel, le chagrin de Marine (…). The creation develops an idea of a long-term project by Julien Creuzet, Opera-archipel. A search of contemporary exoticism nourishes new forms of opera fragmented in texts, sounds, images and gestures. Caribbean by origin, Creuzet is profoundly influenced by the notion of archipelago as a structure for artistic creation. The poems based on his observations and experiences serve as a score for the voice of Julien Marine.
3rd part : João Vieira Torres
João Vieira Torres’ narrative performance Aurora is composed of a series of little tales, told by the artist around a dream film. Indeed, it all started with a dream where he told his mother that he was looking for the children whom his grand-mother Aurora, a midwife and healer, had brought into the world for more than forty years in the deep Sertão in the Northeastern Brazil, in the confines of a scorched earth that rain has not touched for years.
Anchoring in the tradition of storytelling which associates personal diary and travel journal, the performance crosses family memories and collective History. It suggests how over and over present in completion require to rewrite the past.
4th part : Emma Dusong
The Emma Dusong’s work titled Valise focuses on transformations, transitions which change the identity of an individual. The song Irav é, wrote and composed by the artist, is singed in Armenian language. It was chosen for its musicality: even if we do not know the language, we can understand it intuitively through the emotion of the melody. “The melody is dulcet, vertically, upright, as a decision-making linking thinking and walking”, as the artist explains. At the end of the song, the voice slides into the suitcase and then, in turn, starts to sing.
Valentin Lewandowsky, performance H, March 2015
Agnès Geoffray, performance Saint Agnès, March 2015
Julien Creuzet & Julien Marine, performance Opera-archipel, le chagrin de Marine (…), April 2015