Raw materials produced during events/experiences relating to the “Phantom Power” research project, which will be gradually completed with textual material (transcriptions and texts).

“Phantom Power” is a research project initiated by the BA Fine Arts programme of ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne. It questions the social configurations of aural practices in the context of performances and sound installations. How does a performance or an installation take on social consistency and meaning in context? How does it come to matter to the people who experience it? How do we account for the socio-cultural aspects of a sound performance? “Phantom Power” seeks to answer these broad questions through the collective study of three performances and sound installations. These three public events are organised within the school. Each one has been chosen for the specificity of what the invited artists (Leif Elggren, Arto Lindsay, Marja-Leena Sillanpää, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela) call upon: electronic voice phenomena (EVP), the interiority of sound and transport through sound. All three are the object of an ethnographic approach using an original methodology: for each event, one day is devoted to the experience of performances and installations, followed by a discussion between the public and the artists, monitored by a guest researcher (Vinciane Despret, Salomé Voegelin, Juliette Volcler). The next day students re-enact the performances in front of the artists themselves. In other words, the chosen methodology offers a collective conceptual analysis on the first day and a collective analysis through practice on the second day. This is meant to help produce a field survey account of the relational modes of existence of the works, the narratives and the sounds.

ORGAnisers

Stéphane Kropf
Thibault Walter

Guest researchers

Vinciane Despret
Salomé Voegelin
Juliette Volcler

Contact

thibault.walter@ecal.ch

Visiting artists

Leif Elggren
Jung Hee Choi
Arto Lindsay
Marja-Leena Sillanpää
La Monte Young
Marian Zazeela

Research Partners

Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts de Besançon (ISBA)
Daniele Balit
Claire Kueny

Sound engineer

Serge Carrupt
Technique pour la Musique et le Spectacle (TMS)

supports

ECAL
RCDAV
Vidy-L for the coming of V. Despret
Foundation ECAL+ for the production of the Dream House

images

Jimmy Rachez
Stéphane Kropf
Grandee Dorji

Raw materials (audio, video, photo and interview transcripts) from the “Aural Practices” research project on the art of using sound in an art school.

Through sonic “breaching experiments” (including works by Maryanne Amacher and Eliane Radigue, and interventions by Scott Arford, Bill Dietz, Amy Cimini, Kevin Drumm, Emmanuel Holterbach, Jason Kahn, Christina Kubisch, Mario de Vega and Randy H. Yau), the investigation sought to describe the organisation of sound at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne and to thematise its production behind the seemingly natural and obvious character of acoustic ambiance. In the course of experiments and interviews with students, lecturers and artists, an organisation of aurality took shape but without a defined contour: the soundscape of ECAL remained untraceable. Then again, the aural practices lent themselves to being read and understood in their multitude, populating the places with a thousand listening praxis specific to the actors in their process of creation, and redistributing the forces within this network of relations.

The text composed of and by the materials presented in this website is being published in the OHCETECHO collection of Presses du Réel.

Project R&D informations

Researcher

Thibault Walter

Supervisors

Stéphane Kropf
Anna Harris, Université de Maastricht
Philippe Sormani, Institut Suisse de Rome, Université de Lausanne

Visiting ARTISTS

Kevin Drumm
Christina Kubisch
Scott Arford
Randy H. Yau
Mario de Vega
Emmanuel Holterbach
Jason Kahn

Students

1 Bachelor Fine Arts and 2 Bachelor Fine Arts 2018-2019

PARTners

Technology & Society Studies Department, Maastricht University
Cave 12, Geneva
Sonic Protest, Paris
Technique pour la Musique et le Spectacle (TMS)
Ville de Renens

SUPORTS
HES-SO/RCDAV
ECAL
Ville de Renens

IMAGES
Calypso Mahieu
Thibault Walter
Randy H Yau

Compost* of materials from events, workshops and experiments in the arts and social sciences that participated in the production of or resulted from the transformation process of the “Vision Creation New Sound” research event series.

* “We are all compost”. Donna Haraway. Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham, Duke University Press, 2016, p. 101.

IMAGES
Nicolas Genta
Stéphane Kropf
Miriam Laura Leonardi
Calypso Mahieu
Philippe Sormani
Thibault Walter