The Migration of Sounds - Alexandre Castant -

 

The work of Cécile Le Talec can be understood according to three intergenerative creative processes. The first is chronological. Her artistic career, begun in the late 1980s after studies in fine arts and philosophy, effectively developed in periods of creation that are almost autobiographical, characterised by her encounters with scientists, linguists, composers, and by her travels... The second axis to follow would be that of the evolution of techniques – from analogue to digital in particular – which, from one transformation to the other, carries this consistently explorative body of work, in terms of space and immateriality, void and infinity, language and sensoriality. Finally, the third creative process consists of broaching the work of Cécile Le Talec precisely as the mirror of a history of the arts of sound, a synthesis of their aesthetic, and a series of variations on their plastic forms. Sonorama essentially takes stock of this auditive dimension.

 

The sound element is disseminated in the space, thus even constructing a volume. Cécile Le Talec’s initially minimalistic work articulates sound within a spatial exploration, thereby falling within the tradition of sculptors who, like Joseph Beuys, have demonstrated a determined interest in sound. 10 m3 d’Espace Sonore [10m3 of Sound Space] (1995) or Couloir Acoustique [Acoustic Corridor] (1997) thus present installations – as a series of investigations into perception or matter – between the space and sound, which also introduced architectural notions from the 1990s onwards. In 1998, for instance, Les Voisins du Dessus [The Upstairs Neighbours] (1998) exhibited the soundscape of an apartment, the sound of which could be perceived from an adjoining residence. This variation on the sounds of contemporary apartments and its sociologythrough- listening implies that a certain idea of language – architectural, and sound fictions – has traversed this body of work from its very beginnings.

 

Less sound poetry than a poetics of sound, Conférence sur le Silence [Conference on Silence] introduced a decisive element in 2000: the voice. Between sonorities, plays on language and plasticity in the grain of the recorded voice, this work agglomerated figures of absence, inspired by the poetics of Samuel Beckett or the OuLiPo, in order to experiment with an elliptical relationship to the world. Conférence sur le Silence also prefigured the next shift in Cécile Le Talec’s work, a new phase that was to take form with the discovery of harmonic drone and whistled language. For Cécile Le Talec, this bird language spoken by humans* was an extraordinarily enigmatic artistic and audio discovery, and a poietic dynamic that was to follow her into the new millennium.

 

From her encounters with ethno-linguists in order to explore semantics, as well as invisible musical material, to journeys from Mexico to Beijing, Moscow to Kyzyl in the Tyva Republic (Sibera), from La Gomera in the Canary Islands to Guyang in China, the artist has travelled the length and breadth of the planet to learn about whistled language, based on which she has created graphic scores, films, installations, or experimental sonorities. The moving chromatic and auditive presence of birds (which Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, or Paul Panhuysen also focused on) often symbolises this. So when Cécile Le Talec uses them on the staves in Opus 2 – The Whispers, the birds throw their shadow like notes on a screen in an exhibition space turned aviary, and produce enchanting and unsettling images of sounds. As the conductor of this imaginary music, she creates the instruments or machines: their plasticity is in keeping with this immaterial sound project.

 

Recorder, drum kit and percussion organ made by a glassblower (‘Les Impurs’ [The Impure], 2008) or sculpture of twin guitars (Alone Together, 2011), fluorescent record players (Rhapsodiscs, 2009) or deconstructed vinyl records (Voix Ensevelies [Buried Voices], 2011), drawings and figures generated by sound frequencies (Tapis Symphonique [Symphonic Carpet], 2013) or recording, in real time, of the song of the wind passing through a modular construction (Le Salon de Musique [The Music Room], 2013) pertain to this imaginary typology of instruments and audio machines, which Cécile Le Talec has devoted the first half of the 2010s to producing. Praise of a coded, secret, invisible language very often emerges in this sound library of the immaterial; along with the evocation of a utopia – or aporia – whose enchanted presence has been activated throughout the history of sounds, since Athanasius Kircher or Wladimir Baranov-Rossine. Impossibility is also a recurrent element: the instruments very often remain difficult or even impossible to play… Panoramique Polyphonique [Polyphonic Panorama], a tapestry for which Cécile Le Talec won the Grand Prix de la Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie d’Aubusson in 2011, strikes a high note in this regard, among her enchanting, bachelor orchestra. By positioning herself within a search for systems of sound, by citing the group of musicians or birds, which, from The Apocalypse Tapestry to The Lady and the Unicorn, have populated tapestry designs, and by evoking a primitive cinema haunted by music and noise, Panoramique Polyphonique continues to articulate an enchanting and utopic dimension in sound art. In the course of this odyssey, Cécile Le Talec navigates through its vast range of artistic possibilities.