The Parc la Villette, Paris, as told by a series of mobile barriers.
"Following the 2015 attacks, all entrances to public buildings—schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, museums, town halls, police stations, etc.—were reinforced by these metal barriers, without any prior consultation with local residents nor with their being given any indication of how long they would remain in place. The public space has been covered with these barriers, which, over the last decade, summer and winter, day and night, have become the symbols of low-noise security in everyday life.
While the issue of security was part of my initial enquiry—what and who are we protecting ourselves from ? are we protected by these barriers?—I was particularly interested in hearing how these objects themselves perceive the city, particularly the Parc de La Villette. As a result I opted for a pair of contact mics, specifically to record how the environment was transmitted inside their steel structure. If their resonance was my main subject of attention, I also sought to hear how the wind made them sound, by setting them in motion.
Without being too exhaustive, I present an édition raisonnée of a series of sound impressions, documentary and – perhaps – musical, to share this other way of listening to the city and my daily life."
Éric La Casa
Limited edition of 100 copies.
For more than 20 years, while listening to the environment, Éric La Casa (born 1968, Tours, lives and works in Paris) has been questioning the perception of reality and has expanded the notion of what's musical today. Through his aesthetic of capturing sound, his work fits equally into the fields of sound art and music. As a result of his in situ listening processes, he creates forms (of attention) that creep into the venues, slowly infuse there, and become other possible spaces. In the same way that the letter stimulates a country's reading, the in situ aesthetic object renews our relationship to space and landscape.
