* 2020
Sound and light installation and performance for the cloister of the Abbey of Fontevraud.
Collaboration with Séverine Rième for the lighting, Trempolino for the musical production, and the choir of the Maitrise de Musique Sacrée by The Cathedral of Nantes.
The Fontevraud Abbey was founded circa 1100. A peculiar time when was also invented and developed a type of polyphony called hocket. This compositional technique, also used by artists like Björk, Meredith Monk, György Ligeti, and Herbie Hancock, is at the center of this work.
In the Abbey cloister, a harmonium sustained drone is the sound substrate from which emerge four polyphonies sung by four women. The four original songs composed for the installation follow a progression through the history of music, from the middle age to our very modern era.
The music is spatialized on a 16 speakers system. The hocketting voices turn and fly around and through the audience. They are acoustically tuned to spread in the corridors and multiply in the vaultings. Literally making the walls sing.
As an echo to these immaterial sound appearances the lighting focuses on specific elements of the abbey’s architecture. Drawing light diagonals and revealing, at night, the anatomy of the columns and the spires.
Sound and light moving in harmony thus reveal a poetic hidden dimension of the Romanesque edifice.