OPEN STUDIOS SUMMER
20.07.2023
During the summer session of our traditional Open Studios held on Thursday, July 20, 2023, the public was invited to come and discover the work in progress of the residents and enjoy installations and performances created especially for this event.
Chilean transdisciplinary artist Nicole L’Huillier presented a series of sound/listening sculptures and experimental prototypes for exploring vibrational ways of being and thinking. This included La Orejona (XS), a vibrational membrane microphone which merges individual signals with collective noise, and Volantin 1 (soft air agitation apparatus), a prototype of a flying sound system of kites featuring voices and sounds to collectively stir up the wind.
While at La Becque, Hecker initiated a new project addressing processes of analysis and resynthesis, which inhabit a central role in auditory and other sensory research paradigms, investigating the matter on the fringes of the human perceptual gamut. The goal of Hecker’s research at La Becque is to explore, expand, and probe the so far unsung relationship between olfactory perception and sound.
As part of their residency at La Becque, Marcus Pal has developed and recorded their work for piano tuned in just intonation. Creatively exploring the phenomenal dynamics of the auditory imagery of presence and absence in the perception of harmonic sound, this work sees Marcus aesthetically engaged in the process of continuous construction and destruction of contexts of possible meaning – the shared site of hope, doubt, and wonder.
Norwegian artist Hanne Lippard gave a live reading in the garden at La Becque related to her forthcoming record Talk Shop which will be released by Saussura Luce/Dischi Fantom later this year. The reading is a compilation of poems and texts where specific words and sentences are looped and repeated, creating a sensory experience of the need for efficiency and stress found in our private as well as public life.
Elfeky revealed the research behind What Is Beyond You, a project that seeks to document the behavior and life cycles of rare butterfly species in different regions and altitudes around the world. Initiated in the Sinai region, this field of study between science and natural history questions how human and non-human bodies can morph into other bodies and how beings relate to each other, directly or indirectly, in catastrophic situations.
Brtish artist Zinzi Minott offers a continuation of her body-based research The Unruly Body, which considers the possibility of freedom of movement for the Black body and how that links to the sea and green spaces through durational movement, daily unruly movement session consultations, and the development of theories surrounding bodily freedom.
Inspired by caustics, i.e., rays of light that refract through a surface, Ariu’s project uses a hybrid, photography/sculpture form of technology to create light projections that emerge from found photographic material, like a rebooted fantasy of dematerialization for a cyberspatial era.
Davi Pontes showed the work-in-progress of his residency project, the experimental movie Black Ecology, which features scientific images, oceanographic archives, and underwater landscapes generated by 3D software. These fragments of moving images lead us to think about the racial dimension of extractivist relations. They go beyond a place-based configuration of environmental racism as a spatial organization of exposure to environmental harm. Instead, they drive us to think about how advances in science continue to uncover endless ideas of racial extraction.
Ellen Arkbro presented a sound specifically created and tuned for the permanently installed sound system of La Becque’s library. Rather than transforming the room, this sound attempt to blend with the space as it is, softly harmonizing with it. In addition, Arkbro shared part of the work that she has conducted in Temple St-Théodule in La Tour-de-Peilz while in residence, in the form of a sound performance to close the evening.
Open Studios Summer, photo Aurélien Haslebacher