Fonderie.Paccard by Eric La Casa + Slavek Kwi

The place – The sound : Fonderie.Paccard

The matters of scale


A- Introduction :
For ten years I have been endeavouring to fathom reality to get beyond its everyday features, from the most minute to the most macroscopic ones. Thus I am bringing in as many parameters as possible of a place, of a site in the upcoming work so that some kind of dialogue is being woven between inside and outside… Being intent is what connects the listening experience to ground and time : a geophony of motion. So as to breathe into the mind what is far away into what is nearby, my work is as much about questioning our perception of reality than widening the scope of what today is music.

B- Eric La Casa / Slavek Kwi : the Paccard foundry
It is work commissioned by the Annecy Electroacoustic Studio (Collectif & Cie) for its "Musiques tracées de Savoie" series. For this project I made ten hours of recordings (in July 2000), exclusively in the Paccard bell foundry (St Sevrier, Annecy, France). These recordings were stereophonic and multiphonic (live mixing of contact microphones and aerial microphones). From all these, I have put together a work on three parts. And all the materials which were not used were sent to Slavek Kwi (composer/improviser… now living in Ireland) who put them through electroacoustic manipulations and come with a completely different interpretation. Finally, with all that will be left, a collaborative piece will mix both our approaches.

Humfull vase emptying in the air (Victor Hugo, about the bell)

C- The steps of the project :
1. Eric La Casa is on location and is recording
2. Eric La Casa works out a composition in three parts disclosing three ways of listening to the place. He has regard for the acoustic, hence spatial qualities of the space…
3. Slavek Kwi knows the places only from what Eric La Casa sends him – everything that has not been selected for the composition. That is how he discovers the place. He chooses not to listen to Eric La Casa's composition.
4. Thus Slavek Kwi builds up a composition by taking the the recordings as sounds materials for his own purpose. As a starting point, he fathoms the materials from the inside.
5. From what is left unused by Slavek Kwi and from his own unused manipulations Eric La Casa begins to work on re-reading reality and reconstructing it.
6. Slavek Kwi completes the work of Eric La Casa by reinterpreting it entirely…
7. The two composers play their pieces in the foundry (with all the workers)

For 30 years, while listening to the environment, I have been questioning the perception of reality and has tried to expand the notion of infra-ordinary (space-time at low intensity), from background noise to the inaudible, through the wait, the pause.

ericlacasa.info
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