A flock of finches

© Celeste Boursier-Mougenot 

Once, I walked from the chaos of a noisy street into the cool darkness of a church and sat to meditate : from the silence of the sacred space emerged the creaking harrowing sound of a chair sliding along the floor. 
Orchestrated by electro-magnetic captors installed outside the church, the chair was following the movements of the street's passers-by : it's with an apparent economy of means - a chair, an invisible system -, that Celeste Boursier-Mougenot uses the acoustic of objects for his soundscapes.


From here to ear © Celeste Boursier-Mougenot © Peter Whyte © Xippas gallery

The Curve gallery is now showing his last work From here to ear.

Passed a metallic-chain curtain, the gallery opens onto a seaside promenade plunged in semi-obscurity. On the walls are videos of closed-up hands playing guitar. The sound that emanates from the videos doesn't fit the visual experience but reproduces the videos' amplified signal. In immersing confusion, electric guitars can be heard at the far end of the gallery which builds anticipation.


From here to ear © Celeste Boursier-Mougenot  © Xippas gallery 

The display reveals a set of musical instruments used as feeding apparatus while a flock of 40 finches is repeatedly fleeting back and forth in a fascinating manner. 
Landing on the strings of amplified basses and guitars and perching on the top of cymbals to feed and drink, the birds transcend the space, filling it with a cascade of sounds.
While deambulating around the space, the viewers contribute to the birds' motion agenda so that the combination of the two flows determines the musical pattern. The delicate choreography of the birds contrasts with the wild sonorities induced from the guitars : the fragility of their hypnotic dance questions our human scale , challenges our presence in the room. If connections inevitably occur, viewers never truely interact with the birds; an invisible force almost separates us from their relentless activity, until the soundscape initiates a fleeting point, an atemporal window between human and animal realms.


© Celeste Bousier Mougenot

From here to hear was previously shown for the Estuaire in Nantes, a shipping harbour between river and ocean. 
As Celeste suggests, beyond principles of chance and hazardous beauty lies a desire to find less subjective ways to compose music, such as observing - and re-thinking - life's diverse currents of activities as auditive matter.
His sensory landscapes mirror nature's sacred geometry to reveal processes of harmonic and chaotic complexity. 

Thanks to Celeste Boursier-Mougenot.