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Antoine Daviaud and the exhibition "IF THERE'S SPACE I’LL STAY, IF THERE'S TIME I’LL SING"

mana

A few weeks ago, the Sheriff gallery in Paris hosted the group show IF THERE'S SPACE I'LL STAY, IF THERE'S TIME I'LL SING, a meeting place for the narratives of artists who had all chosen Armenia as their point of departure. Poetry, photography and music trace the past and evolving landscape of this culture. We asked composer and producer Antoine Daviaud to explain his sound work, which accompanies the exhibition.




The exhibition IF THERE'S SPACE I'LL STAY, IF THERE'S TIME I'LL SING represented a challenge in terms of sound design. How were we to accompany visitors as they wandered among the photos by Patrick Bienert (@patrick_bienert) and Suzanna Spertsyan (@suspertsyan), and the work of Nensi Avetisan (@nensiavetisian)? What tools, what materials to use?

Long discussions with Suzanna on the core of this project, its stakes and its various themes, led to the establishment of the architectural elements: a long stroll whose sounds would come almost entirely from the hours of recordings I'd made in Armenia in 2021.


This raises the question of the sound vocabulary to be used: how to accompany the reflections proposed by the exhibition while adapting to the passive listening suggested by the gallery space?

The core of the sound syntax quickly became apparent: I had had the chance to record Kenas covering some of Komitas' songs (a historic figure in Armenian musical heritage) in one of Yerevan's great churches. These recordings were a perfect response to the issues raised by the exhibition: a young Armenian covering traditional songs in the spiritual space represented by the church. There was already something of the ghostly melancholy in these songs.

What's more, these recordings echoed the urban life surrounding the church: the honking horns and incessant traffic cohabit with the chants in the church's sound space. It was clear to us that we had to keep these urban sound elements, as they said something about the cohabitation of worldly noise with a form of spirituality.


Once this core had been established, the best way to meet the challenges of the exhibition was to deploy the sound vocabulary through a system of referencing and appearance/disappearance, to create a space specific to the gallery and the exhibition, between Paris and Armenia. Moving from concrete places, via field recording of identifiable spaces, to abstract places such as field recording reworked to obtain textures and spatiality.



The continuity of these movements is ensured by the musical elements: Kenas's voices, the flutuandi string score, the synthesizers and the Armenian bell. Giving tonal sound objects a structural role rather than a thematic one enabled us to avoid drawing on a collective musical imaginary in favor of a sensoriality of sound and texture.


With this in mind, I reworked the field recordings I had recorded on site to create this autonomous exhibition space: sometimes drawing on raw recordings from the Matenadaran (Yerevan's manuscript museum), to refer back to the museographic space itself, and to what it implies in terms of evocation; sometimes reworking field recordings from natural spaces so as to "open up" the site.


Likewise, the sculpting of certain recordings through filters, reverbs and various treatments gives rise to concrete sound objects such as a street, a forest, etc., a texture whose characteristics seemed to respond to a feeling that runs through the entire exhibition: the hollow presence of something that is no longer quite there. A texture whose characteristics seemed to respond to a feeling that runs through the entire exhibition: the hollow presence of something that is no longer quite there.


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You can listen to the whole composition on the artist's website.

You can follow Antoine Daviaud here.



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