The Sound Arts Forum, renamed Zone Libre (Free Zone), from the name of the Corsican association that initiated it, asserts itself as a sound arts festival which, as Tommy Lawson (its artistic director, also sound creator) specifies, “offers forms adapted (a rich program of concerts, performances, sound installations) to current and forward-looking constraints, forms reinvented around new stories and more generally digital writing ”.
Zone Libre brings together, over five days, several places in the city of Bastia and presents both island, national and international talents. Transcultures and the European Pepinieres of Creation are pleased to be associated with this Summer edition (also with a time more focused on reflection and debate – sound arts forum – scheduled for October 2021 followed in November, at the Una Volta cultural center, by the presentation of the sound installation PHASME) to present a selection of “No Lockdown Art” videos bringing together around fifteen international visual and sound artists, an evening of sonic performances with Paradise Now playing a live soundtrack on a video by Régis Cotentin and Christian Vialard in an organic audio solo set; the latter, professor of digital arts at the Villa Arson / National Center of Contemporary Art and National School of Art (Nice) also participates in a round table around various issues related to digital and sound emergence (named after program initiated by Transcultures in 2007 in connection with a network of Belgian and French art schools, of which Villa Arson is a partner and which Zone Libre will join), and presents a sound installation (also supported by the European Pepinieres) by one of his students.
These different activities fully participate to a new festival formula which celebrates the sound art(s), in its most creative and diverse expressions and privileges, in its programming and its production line, creation and performance. discovery, in a demanding way.
Yann Van Der Meer (Fr) – Trois petites percées ambulatoires
From the standpoint of selfless walking, the city and its surroundings reveal themselves in a strange way. What does the temporality of wandering in an environment prohibiting improvisation imply?
Yann Van Der Meer is a 5th year student at Villa Arson (Nice)
Three-channel musical installation. Duration: 15 min
Co-production: European creation nurseries, Transcultures and Villa Arson / ENSA Nice.
As part of the “Digital and Sound Emergences” program initiated by Transcultures Belgium
No Lockdown Art – Video Selection
As part of the No Lockdown Art ongoing project initiated by Transcultures and the European Creation Nurseries during the first lockdown linked to the Covid-19 to support contemporary artistic projects likely to be broadcast online, several videos have been produced by artists (visual, sound, multimedia…) integrating the sonic and experimental dimensions in creations of various aesthetics, which escape traditional classifications and offer a poetic and alternative look on our mutant world.
Sélection No Lockdown Art-Metavers
i-REAL – Monde_04_ALICE – Marc Veyrat, FR, 2021, 3’05
This World 04 in VR, included in the artwork XR i-REAL, imagined, programmed by Jonathan Juste and whose soundtrack is signed Paradise Now, is “architextured“ (-! Henri Lefebvre !-) around the totality of the words used in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, famous novel published by Lewis Carroll in 1865. Inside this Obscure World, “ob-scene” of the text (-! Georges Bataille !-), the words ®-CONSTITUTE as we progress walls of blinding texts/images progressively revealing passages, “Entre-eSPACES” (-! Carole Brandon !-) through which we can progress… The electro-rythmic-organic music of Paradise Now (BE/FR) roams the floating walls of this Lettrist maze as if looking for a mutant prey.
Cosmic Invertebrate Mindfuck – A Limb BE, 2020, 5’03
A Limb (BE) electronic cinematic music interacts with SaveMe Oh (NL) visuals in the Second Life open space.
All was recorded live, during a streamed event, scheduled for Transcultures (as part of its ‘No Lockdown Art’ initiative), and organized by A Limb. It is a criticism of sex messages present on medias so often, and even more often during pandemic times. We are shooted more than ever with consumerist sex fucking our mind.
Related links “Coronavirus Pandemia” serial by Glasz DeCuir (ES) : First Wave – “Wash Your Hands” – Second Wave – “Superspreader”
Music : A Limb [soundcloud.com/a-limb]
Visual artist : SaveMe Oh [savemeoh.wordpress.com]
Filmed and edited by Glasz DeCuir [glaszdecuir.wordpress.com]
Renata K in Transonic Second Life – Glasz DeCuir, ES, 2021 – 5’57”
Glasz DeCuir is the identity as machinima (= Computer Generated Imagery) director and screenwriter of a multi-media visual artist from San Sebastian who explores, in various ways, the art of new media and digital cinema.
Glasz DeCuir filmed and edited the images of the performance of Renata K (the experimental project of classical flutist Renata Kambarova, from Uzbekhistan) during the first edition of the Transonic Second Life Festival which took place in February 2021 at the Cat’s Club .
A dive into cyber dunes where Renata K’s avatar wanders, in the sonic sirocco, under a cosmic firmament, to meet other intriguing creatures …
With the support of Transcultures and European Pepinieres of Creation
After Covid_19, Philippe Boisnard, FR, 2020, 7’
After Covid_19 is part of the research on disaster landscapes carried out by Philippe Boisnard in recent years. This creation, achieved during the first global confinement, was made live from pure-data (graphic programming software for musical and multimedia creation in real time) in both sound and image.
This landscape and its evolution attempts to aesthetically show the emergence of the vertigo of the epidemic. Like a metaphorical vision, its crescendo is that of the psychic panic of man in the face of the surge of the pandemic.
With the support of Transcultures and European Pepinieres of Creation.
Mars Abstraction S3 – Petermfriess, DE, 2019, 10’00
This third video work of Mars Abstraction series defies the imagination in relation to a purely linear extension of human territories in space that is unlikely to happen as such. The visual material, taken from public sources, is reworked and recomposed to evoke the landscapes of Mars where, despite the date given by several probes, unknown mysteries and energies remain.
As we do not know much about what can be heard on Mars, this video is accompanied by a sound creation that is inspired by both the imaginary and existing data.
Production: European Pepinieres of Creation, Transcultures.
Sélection No Lockdown Art -Sonopoetics
Prince, John Sanborn/Commando, USA, 2020, 5’23
In the process of creating ths video, the American queer writer/performer Lynn Breedlove provided this insight into the text: “I wrote this when Prince died, about how he affected me and my pals’ personal lives by speaking up and being himself. It’s about how an artist never knows how or where their work’s gonna land, whose life they’re gonna change.
But if they make something with integrity, The World gets different….” This led her to focus on the feelings of longing and loss prompted by dealing directly with painful memories from turbulent times, and towards crucial voices, long neglected. The result is relevant, raw, and intensely intimate – a “home movie” (with a post rock soundtrack of her group Commando) of emotions confessed to camera and to the world.
Silent Noise, Tamara Lai, BE, 2020, 5’29’’
“What flavors here?” What scents now … “Nostalgia for the days before … Carelessness, freedom of movement, human warmth, nature … which the Coronavirus does not block deprives us cruelly.
This new video-poem by Tamara Laï whose images were filmed in various places and countries (Belgium, China, Scotland, Italy, Netherlands) was finalized in residency at home in Liège in the lockdown period.
Direction, writing, image and sound editing : Tamara Laï – Musique : Caroline Boë
Production : Thalamus Prod avec le soutien de Transcultures, European Pepinieres of Creation
Ces riens essentiels #4, Gauthier Keyaerts, BE, 3’19’’
Ces riens essentiels is an infinite work-in-progress, initiated during the lockdown. The journey actually started in 2018 when Gauthier Keyaerts was in Brittany, shooting images from the Ocean, the shore, lichens…
He brought back this particular energy and feeling of spirituality (felt by André Breton).
It helped since March to focus on the essentials: family, body, nature (insects, trees, flowers…), love… this sublime chaos.
With the support: Transcultures, European Pepinieres of Creation.
Triptyque Prototype, Thomas Israël, BE, 2020, 2’50’’
Triptyque Prototype is an enigma with an exploded temporality which allows cross readings, associative. Its protagonist (the dancer Marilyn Daoust on a choreography by Manon Oligny) is in tension between the doll or the android and the woman of flesh.
This video filmed in Montreal in 2015, as part of the interdisciplinary performance project Les Oracles (initiated by Productions Rhizome-Quebec in partnership with Transcultures-Belgium) was finalized in Brussels in Spring 2020 with a minimalist soundtrack by Paradise Now.
With the support: Transcultures, des European Pepinieres of Creation, Productions Rhizome
Post Human Survival, Didié Nietzsche/Radio Prague, BE, 2020, 5’20’’
On a meditative soundtrack by experimental group Radio Prague (Didié Nietzche, Jules Nerbard – electronics, Renata K – flute) A soft hallucinogic evocation of nature taking back its rights and peacefulness during the pandemic lockdown, but also afterwards, when the evil human species will have left the earth…
With the support: Transcultures, European Pepinieres of Creation.
Sélection No Lockdown Art-Echanges/croisements
Visions of inside (Common Ground Project) – Kika Nicolela, BR, 2020, 8’51
Visions of inside is the first video made using the database of the Common Ground Project initiated by Kika Nicolela in April 2020 in reaction to the Covid-19 crisis. It promotes the creation of a shared database of videos, sounds and texts by worldwide artists, reflecting on the multiple issues raised by the crisis and the lockdown. Above all, the Common Ground Project’s goal is to collectively use creation as means of communion and resistance.
Kika Nicolela edited videos, sounds and texts by : Adrianne Little (US) | Aline Yasmin & Alex Cepile (BE) | Anna Berndtson (DE) | Carlosmagno Rodrigues (BR) | Christophe Litou (FR) | Craca (BR) | Davi Cavalcante (BR) | Fumiharu Sato & Hiroko Haraguchi (JP) | Gauthier Keyaerts (BE) | Gerard Chauvin (FR) | Gustavo Marcasse v(BR) | Isa Belle + Paradise Now (BE) | Ivelina Ivanova (BG) | Jan Kather (US) | John Sanborn (US) | Jorge Lozano (CAN) | Liliana Velez (CO) | Luana Lacerda (BR) | Marcia Beatriz Granero (BR) | Marina Fomenko (RU) | Mike Hoolboom (CAN) | Nia Pushkarova (BG) | Nung-Hsin Hu (US) | Philippe Boisnard (FR) | Phyllis Baldino (US) | Rejani Cantoni + Mirella Brandi + Muep Etmo (BR) | Samuel Bester (FR) | Sara Não Tem Nome (BR) | Simon Dumas (CN) | Simon Guiochet (FR) | Sonia Guggisberg (BR) | Susana Lopez (ES) | Ulf Kristiansen (NO)
Coproduction : Transcultures, In progress asbl, European Pepinieres of Creation
COR01β – LAMAφ, BE, 2020, 10’00
Constituted just before the lockdown in Brussels in March 2020, the COR01β video brings together, as a multi-color and multi-layered composition, all the energies and challenges of the moment, expressed in a full video of the transversal group LAMAφ (musicians, dancers, videographers, actors…) which occurs, in a contextual approach favoring improvised encounters, in different urban spaces.
Collective creation by Maurice Charles Jj (BE), Didié Nietzsche (BE-, Eliza Pais (ES), Emanuele Gonano (IT) and Petermfriess (DE)
No Lockdown Drift, Pastoral, BE/FR, 2020, 5’09’’
Produced via connected exchanges during the first Covid-19 lockdown in Spring 2020 by the Pastoral post pop duet, Lockdown Drift captures the expectation, the floating sensation but also the domestic reverie, the imaginary transfiguration and a form of sweet melancholy.
The images and sounds that dialogue between the residences (both in Wallonia-Belgium) of the protagonists (Huy for Christophe Bailleau and Mons for Philippe Franck) all come from the interior spaces and their close surroundings.
An invitation to cherish the living in these different forms (human, animal, mineral, celestial …) and its power-hope of creative metamorphosis.
Production : Transcultures, Pépinières européennes de Création
Top Budget – Prism, AG/IN/IE/FR/BE, 2020, 5’03
The Top Budget track was realized with little means, following technical problem with the equipment, the duo having recorded with the microphone of a old computer, using free softwares and various borrowed tools.
This is how the low tech sound of PRISM came about. In that spirit, this video shows how problems lead to last-minute solutions minute, a dark but energetic tension, alternating current and high voltage.
The video was filmed with an old iPhone, and also uses images found, recycled, … in a DIY, crazy and punky spirit of the duet.
Flux & Densités, Alain Wergifosse, BE, 2020, 5’
In a set of prisms, filters and mirrors, Alain Wergifosse offers some fragments of opto-mechanical treatments on pure light and on some digital images put into video feedback.
These images and sounds come from a multi-channel video installation project in work in progress for the Vice Versa 2020-21 residency/exchange between Transcultures (BE) and La Chambre Blanche (QBC).
Production : Transcultures, La Chambre Blanche, Pépinières européennes de Création
Debate | Meeting-Debate | Sound and digital emergence – The challenges of supporting creation in art schools
Zone Libre is inaugurating this year the ‘Sound and Digital Emergences” section intended to develop in future editions. Thanks to a partnership with the international network of European Pepinieres of Creation and with Transcultures (Centre for digital and sound cultures – Belgium) which since 2007 has successfully developed a year-round support program for creation and dissemination as well as technological and critical support for young talents from French art schools (including Villa Arson-Nice) and abroad and promoting exchanges of skills and artistic collaborations.
What are the challenges, pitfalls and horizons of such collaborative initiatives today? How do the dimensions of awareness, creation and professionalization come together in concrete terms?
With Philippe Franck (director of European Pepinieres of Creation and Transcultures – Centre for digital and sound cultures/Belgium), Christian Vialard (artist and professor at Villa Arson – ENSA Nice), Yann Van Der Meer (artist / student at Villa Arson), Tommy Lawson (sound artist and artistic director of Zone libre).
In partnership with the European Pepinieres of Creation and with Transcultures.
Paradise Now (Mons) + Régis Cotentin (Lille) | Audio-visual Performance
On phantasmagorical, sumptuous and dreamlike images by French videographer / director Régis Cotentin, Paradise Now, Belgian sound and intermedia creator offers a transonic and cinematic journey through vaporous and enveloping atmospheres punctuated by poetic fragments to sensitive post-songs or even to throbbing grooves.
Dureation : 45 min
In partnership with European Pepinieres of Creation and with Transcultures.
Infos
- 06 > 10.07.2021
- Centru culturale Alb’Oru – Spaziu Mantinum
- Place Claude Papi 20600 Bastia – France
- Free – booking : +33 6 08 07 47 86
- Full program on festival website (in french)
Production
- Zone Libre is supported by the Collectivité de Corse, the city of Bastia and SPEDIDAM
- In partnership with the European Creation Nurseries, Transcultures, the Una Volta Cultural Center and the Cie Art Mouv ’.
- zonelibres.com – bastia-tourisme.com/lieu/centre-culturel-alboru