NICOLE L’HUILLIER (CL)
Residency period: May-July 2023
During my residency at La Becque, I worked on a series of membrane apparatuses, sound sculptures and experimental prototypes, designed to extend and materialize my work exploring vibratory modes of being and thinking. These include a hand-held vibrating membrane microphone – La Orejona (XS) – that merges individual signals into collective noise, an outdoor recording studio used as a tool for noisy collective jam sessions, convoluted encounters, and listening processions, and a performance in relation/interference with Jan St Werner’s Space Synthesis exhibition at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in Germany. I also worked on prototypes for a flying sound system of kites – including Volantin 1 (soft air agitation apparatus) – offering our sounds to collectively stir up the wind.
With these ideas in mind, I hosted a sound creation workshop at EVAM (Etablissement vaudois pour l’accueil des Migrants), opening the way for resonant pedagogies and dialogues with local artists from migrant communities.
I also engaged in a collaborative artistic research in the context of the exhibition project ‘Resonaciones’ with ifa gallery Stuttgart in which we developed an experimental methodology for collection revision and got to listen and relate to ancient whistles from the Andes (kept at the Linden Museum, Stuttgart) that have been silent for decades.
Many of my sonic experiments at La Becque are gently coming together into an album. It was like a little refuge in time, where we could drift, slow down, openly experiment, swim, read, reflect, share, and listen to each other. — Nicole L’Huillier
Nicole L’Huillier (born in Santiago, 1985) is a transdisciplinary artist who works with sounds, vibrations, resonances, and multiple transductions to explore sound as a construction material that intertwines agencies from the micro to the cosmic level, stimulating new imaginaries, sensitivities, and collectivities. L’Huillier works with new and ancient narrative and creative technologies to actively move beyond anthropocentric perspectives and practice decolonial ways of imagining and being between worlds.
Nicole L'Huillier, La Becque, 2023, photo Matthieu Croizier, Juan Necochea and Nicole L'Huillier