Author: Jean-Baptiste

I am a composer, post-doctoral researcher and cultural organiser. I work on listening and its relationships with society, technology and musical creation.

Rémanence

2024

Rémanence is based on found materials, recorded by amateur sound hobbyists in France and Germany between the 1960s and the 1990s. The tapes and cassettes were collected in the two countries in Summer 2023, while on trip to investigate the sonic practices of French and German sound hunters. People were interviewed, and sonic material gathered. Sound hunters were amateurs interested in sound, who, from the 1950s, started to produce radio programmes, to organise national and international contests, to edit magazines, to gather themselves in tape recording clubs. This piece documents and poeticises their activities, that ranged from family recordings, to musique concrète, to the recording of bird songs, to the soundtracks of amateur films, to music, interviews and audio documentaries. Short electroacoustic compositions by me link or sometimes frame sound hunters’ recordings.

The tapes and cassettes of this piece were collected thanks to a funding from the Deutsch-Französischer Bürgerfonds. Many thanks to them.

Rémanence was broadcast in the Netherlands at and from the Institute of Sonology in Den Haag, and in Germany (Radio Cashmere) on the 26th of May, thanks to On Air On Site. It was also broadcast in France in June on Tikka Radio.

Milieux 1

2022

Milieux is interested in the everyday, the non-event, the ordinary. Time is given to train our attention, to raise our awareness to what lies around, to what we are part of, to what we bath in. Milieux is a proposal to contemplate the ordinary, the non-event that triggers awe.

The series is a wait, an active stillness. Its slow temporality forces one to look at their own reflection.The wait, the non-action, give time to listening. It is a mirror, a place and time for reflexivity. The calmness and the stillness do not over or constantly stimulate the attention. They offer a time to contemplate the non-event. One should explore the left-aside, the ordinary, where nothing in particular is happening. The non-action of Milieux is not a wait for things to come but an active posture where one is related to its surrounding and to oneself.

A time to rest, at the limit of boredom. Some pieces of Milieux are an exploration of the grey-zone between interest and dullness, between being awake and asleep. The pieces offer a time and space where the listener’s mind can run free, discretely carried by the sounds, which foster dream and imagination. A dream emerging from the non-event, because of the non-event. The non-event and non-action as the infinite source of possibilities. Milieux intends to give time to listening, which is also a time to think, to imagine, to create.

Decameron-19

2020

Un projet de Sylvain Creuzevault auquel nous avons eu le plaisir de participer (merci Nicolas Jacquot), pour accompagner le premier confinement Covid-19 :


“C’est le printemps ! Maintenant qu’un milliard d’individus est tenu de rester chez lui, je me suis dit qu’il serait simple et vrai de faire enregistrer chaque nouvelle par des actrices et des acteurs de plusieurs pays, en plusieurs langues. J’ai écrit aux acteurs que je connais en France, mais également en Autriche, en Allemagne, en Italie, en Suisse, au Royaume-Uni (eux, je sais pas pourquoi ils n’ont pas répondu), une connaissance avait même une amie islandaise, j’invite encore. Ils m’ont répondu. Qu’ils soient ici remerciés. Ils sont 100, ils pourraient être 1000. D’ici à la fête de la Saint-Jean, nous aurons écouté ensemble Le Décaméron de Boccace, recueil de cent nouvelles, écrit entre 1349 et 1353, après la pandémie de peste noire de 1348. Alors là, les amis, vraiment, c’est à deux pas, presque 700 ans. Sept femmes et trois hommes sont retirés à quelques kilomètres de Florence, confinés. Et que font-ils ? Ils se racontent des histoires.

Nous avons demandé à des acteurs d’enregistrer depuis chez eux les nouvelles du Décaméron de Boccace. Ils ont répondu. Une série de miniatures sonores, de petites histoires du XIVe siècle. À partir du mardi 24 mars 2020, tous les jours à 8h, lundimatin publiera une nouvelle, lue par des acteurs français, mais aussi allemands, autrichiens, italiens, et autres. Cent nouvelles, une par jour, au petit déj pour les abdos et les zigos.”


L’ensemble des nouvelles mises en musique : lundi.am/decameron-19