Matrices
From where and from when do we speak?
Hearing is one of the first senses that develop in the fetus. The signs, the sounds of the external world come to us, in the first place, through our mother’s belly. This thin coat of water and skin is like an interface, that filters our first contact with the outside. Inside it, the world’s rumor is softened.
Voices. Mother's voice, voices of relatives, of strangers, unknown or familiar... These surrounding voices initiate us to language from the very beginning of
our existence. These timbres, these accents, each day heard, form our ears and prepare our vocal cords. From our first to last moments of life, the languages we speak will be like a vast
field of experimentation, interactions and emotions that we will never cease to discover and tame. But where do these languages, these words came from? From which peoples, from which
territories? What was their journey? What bodies transported them?
This extended project proposes to explore in a free and broad way, how voices and words are shaped and transformed, how they get through us, how they make
us.
Matrices
Site-specific sound installations, workshops
La Semaine du Son, January 2023, Brussels
What happens when speech travels from body to body, from one element to another, from the intimate to the public, from the inside to the outside?
Throughout our lives, and even in our mother's womb, we are immersed in language. We listen, assimilate, repeat, formulate, express, etc. At each of these stages small discrepancies arise between what is said and what is heard. Representing these shifts, the work invites, the audience to plunge its voice into the earth, hear through water or sand, listen and interpret.
'Rosa Rosa Rosae Rosae'
Collective exhibition at Maison Pelgrims
Brussels, Sept-oct 2021
Une était la langue is a project that encompasses several sonorous, visual or textual pieces. At its heart, a reflection on etymology from which I follow the evolution and ramifications of modern words, going
back to the roots of Indo-European languages, in a place and time where similarities were such that our languages were One. Revealing the shifts in the meaning of words across spaces and ages, I summon and crystallize a certain poetry that emerges from their original signification.
The work Coal-that shines, takes as primary linguistic material Coal (1976), a poem from the eponymous book by the US author Audre Lorde (1934-1992). Addressing the constructive aspects of a multiform and multilayered identity, Coal expresses a sensitive relationship to language that
inspires me.
The workshop that follows this work is conceived as its participative activation. I invite people to use their own writing skills with the support of a kind of card game.
On one side of the cards, current words; on the other side, their reconstructed indo-european version. After composing a sentence or a poem, participants are able to "translate" and transform their writing according to the mutations of letters and meanings.
Etymological, sonic and formal researches, about words crossing times and materials.The words « water » in English, « air » in French and « земля » in Russian, are taken from the root, vocalized and immersed in their respective elements.
Entre/Antre
1- What is speaking for you?
2- How would you describe your voice?
3- How is your voice recorded?
4- What voices do you like?
5- What is the difference between speaking and thinking?
6- Do you think we can think without words?
7- Do you think we can communicate without speaking?
8- Who do you talk to?
9- Why do you talk?
10- What do you talk about?
11- Do you speak alone?
12- In your opinion, what are the first words you said?
Sound works, In situ installations.
L'Escaut, Brussels, June-September 2020.
Collective residency with Boryana Todorova, Sylvie Pichrist,
Sylvie Rodriguez.
Entre/Antre (between/lair) is a cohabitation project. Four artists share a space and a work theme.
What happens between entering and leaving? What is the difference between an interior and an exterior? Is the boundary between the two spaces visible or invisible, thick or microscopic, hermetic
or porous? Is a lair open or closed? Empty or full? What is its function and possible transformation?
These are examples of questions that connected and led each of the artists, interfere with each other and with the place they occupy.
Parler ( To speak). Twelve questions.
Water *word is a poetic interpretation of the journey of word through space and time.
*Wódr is the primary word that has given rise to many words in different Indo-European languages, such as Greek 'hydor' or Oscan 'utur', English 'water', Spanish 'onda', etc.
In tree aquariums (filled of water), the word “water” can be heard at different stages of its evolution… From the abyss to the air, the word get transformed as well as the sound, while emerging through the successive aquariums.
Water *wórd
(Une était la langue #0)
Sound installation, Curiouser#9
Saint-Leonard-on-Sea (GB), June 2019
With the precious and kind collaboration of
Andrew M. Byrd, linguist and phonologist,
professor at University of Kentucky.
In this piece I mean to connect a thing with its name, language and substance, in an attempt to dive into the mysterious profundity of etymology. I have asked Pr. Andrew Byrd to write and utter a poem, giving voice to the "Grandson of Waters", Indo-European God of Water.
By the 19th century, linguists considered that all modern Indo-European languages descended from
a single tongue, Proto-Indo-European.
The question became, what did PIE sound like?
In 1868, German linguist August Schleicher used reconstructed PIE vocabulary to create a fable,
The Sheep and the Horses, in order to hear some approximation of the language.
Recently, researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford have developed a sound-based method to move back through the family tree of languages that stem from PIE. They can simulate how
certain words would have sounded when they were spoken 8,000 years ago.
The sheep and the horses
Transcription by Andrew Byrd
A vocal experiment : From One to Oinos