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PaaLabRes Activities 2011-25

Information on PaaLabRes Activites
2011-2025

We organized these activities in four main categories:

  • Publications, including the website
  • Public presentations whether they are communication, verbal or sound performances, concerts, festival, workshops, etc.
  • Working sessions
  • And those related to PaalabRes (not explicitly supported by the collective PaalabRes, but involving members of PaaLabRes).

Access to specific academic years:

2010-11  |  2011-12  |  2012-13  |  2013-14  |  2014-15
2015-16  |  2016-17  |  2017-18  |  2018-19  |  2019-20
2020-21  |  2021-22  |  2022-23  |  2023-24  |  2024-25


 

Academic year 2010-11

April 2011
May 2011
En acte: Concert of the improvisation trio PFL Traject (Pascal Pariaud, Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval) at the Souffle Continu in Paris.

 

Academic year 2011-12

September 2011 – April 2012
En acte: Improvisation worshops by PFL Traject (Pascal Pariaud, Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval) at the Lyon CFMI (Centre de Formation des Musiciens Intervenants à l’école).
January – May 2012
En acte: Residency of the improvisation trio PFL Traject at the André Malraux Center in Vandœuvre-Lès-Nancy. Improvisation workshops with the Nancy Conservatorium (music and dance), the Vandœuvre-Lès-Nancy music school and the Maison des Arts of Lingolsheim in Alsace.
Concerts as part of the Festival Musique Action (May 16, 2012) and in Lingolsheim (May 18, 2012).
January 19-21, 2012
En acte: PaaLabRes Days at the MLIS Villeurbanne, first edition
(Maison du Livre, de l’Image et du Son).
Thursday January 19
Presentation before the concert of Qwat Neum Sixx.
Friday January 20
PaaLabRantesques Performances, signature of a birth certificat.
Saturday January 21, morning
Workshops open to all of sound manipulations (“Sound shed” by Agnès Moyencourt, “Movicscore” by Nicolas Sidoroff)
Saturday afternoon
Artistic experiences to share: looking, making, listening, speaking (PaaLabRes cell, Spirojki, #flam)
March 19, 2012
En acte:PaaLabRes seminar on the translation (by Jean-Charles François) of “The Embodied Mind”, by David Borgo (the third chapter of his book, Sync or Swarn).
27 avril 2012
En acte : PaaLabRes seminar on notation and representation.

 

Academic year 2012-13

October 2012 – June 2013
En acte: Monthly meetings of the PaalabRes group experimenting with improvisation protocols (Jean-Charles François, Laurent Grappe, Karine Hahn, Gilles Laval, Pascal Pariaud, Gérald Venturi).
October 1, 2012
En acte: PaaLabRes seminar based on Samuel Chagnard’s research as part of his Master’s Thesis in Education Sciences, « Modèle de pratique et pratique du modèle en conservatoire – Un musicien, c’est fait pour jouer » (“Model of Practice and Practice of the Model in Conservatories – A Musician is Meant to Play”).
November 10, 2012
En acte: PaaLabRes seminar with Clément Canonne on his research on Collective Free Improvisation.
February 22 – March 16, 2013
En acte: PaaLabRes Days at the MLIS Villeurbanne, 2nd edition
(Maison du Livre, de l’Image et du Son).
Exhibition “The Hybrid Artistic Object”: opening reception and several guided visits during the month preceding the two PaaLabRes Days.
Friday, March 15
“Concertation Concertante #1”, with “Live Pipes” by Pascal Pariaud and Guillaume Dussably; “Documented/tary Harp”, installation and performance by Karine Hahn; “A Musician is Meant to Play”, gestural lecture by Samuel Chagnard; “May 6, 2010, Midnight” a film on Otomo Yoshihide by Sam Harfouche and Marc Siffert; “Its Number is Rose”, performance by Carole Rieussec and Enna Chaton; “Italian Texts”, by Guigou Chenevier, Cyril Darmedru, and Nico Geny.
Saturday May 16, morning
Workshops open to all (“Sound Poetry”, by Jean-Charles François, “Gesture, Music and Everyday Scores” by Pascal Pariaud, “Manipulations of Visual and Sound Objects, Modeling Clay”, by Nicolas Sidoroff.
Saturday afternoon
“Concertation Concertante N#2” with “C9H13NO3 based on Hugues Reip’s Adrénaline, I, II and III, performance by Laurent Fléchier, Agnès Moyencourt, Nicolas Sidoroff, and Gérald Venturi; “GPFL Interconnect”, demonstration-improvisation by Laurent Grappe and PFL Traject (Pascale Pariaud, Jean-Charles François, and Gilles Laval); “Oh fil des ondes” (Oh waves thread) interactive intervention with the audience by Lucio Reco; “Listening Experiences” with the places, acoustics and sound environments” MORGE by Mathias Forge.
Saturday late afternoon
Café-PaaLabRes with “What is the Purpose of Musical Theatre?” lecture-performance by Jean-Charles François; “Fred Frith’s Graphic Scores” by the students from Villeurbanne National Music School; discussion with the audience.
Saturday night
Sound poetry with Cosima Weiter for her album release of Ici on the label GMVL.
Mars 2013
En acte: PaaLabRes publication, “Pratiques Artistiques en Actes, LABoratoire de REchercheS, Sur les pratiques nomades et transversales”, in Revue&Corrigée (written surface of experimental sound practices) n°95, March 2013, pp.20-24 (carte blanche 1/4).
May 10, 2013
En acte: Seminar PaaLabRes on Alain Savouret’s research in his book Le solfège de l’audible.
June 2013
En acte: PaaLabRes publication, “Deuxième edition des journées à la Maison du Livre de l’Image et du Son, 15-16 Mars 2013”, in Revue&Corrigée n°96, June 2013, pp.26-32. (carte blanche 2/4).
July 2013
En acte: Deep Listening Conference, Troy (USA), participation by Jean-Charles François presenting “Improvisation Workshops in Eastern France, 2012”.

 

Academic year 2013-14

September 2013
En acte: PaaLabRes publication, “Second edition of the Days II” on the hybrid artistic object, content of the various presentations, workshops and debates”, in Revue&Corrigée n°97, September 2013, pp. 20-28 (carte blanche 3/4).
September 2013 – June 2014
En acte: Projet « MooM (Olivier Messiaen non-rétrogradable, or Multiple-orchestre-olivier-Messiaen), led by Gilles Laval and Nicolas Sidoroff with Pham Trong Hieu and Franck Testut, at the National Music School of Villeurbanne. This can be found as one of the itineraries-songs of the paalabres.org first edition
December 2013
En acte: Publication by Nicolas Sidoroff and Gérald Venturi, “PaaLabRes: Concerning Adrénaline, March 16 2013”, in Revue&Corrigée n°98, décembre 2013, pp. 14-19 (carte blanche 4/4).
January 17, 2014
En acte: PaaLabRes Days at MLIS Villeurbanne, 3rd edition
(Maison du Livre, de l’Image et du Son).
Co-Loc/actions, artistic acts and audience participation, with GRAC (Groupe Recherche-Action).
Various PaaLabRes workshops and other Ethnogra(c)phies: “catalogue of ‘ethical pieces’” led by Laetitia Overney, Amandine Guilbert and Rémi Eliçabe; “Come to speak to my harp in order to play it” by Karine Hahn; “Addict a phone” led by Gilles Laval and Laurent Grappe; “Let’s Draw Sounds!” led by Nicolas Sidoroff and Gérald Venturi.
A gestural publication, “Bonsoir Clermont!” by Samuel Chagnard; and an accompanied video “Heterogeneous Encounters, Sound Co-constructions” by PFL Traject (Pascal Pariaud, Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval).
February 16, 2014
En acte: Constitutive General Assembly of PaalabRes organization:
“Purpose: to create a research laboratory on nomadic and transversal practices; to compile a documentation, write and publish in various media, translate and work at the national and French-speaking level in collaboration with European and international partners, to confront a diversity of practices, organize cultural events, encounters, seminars, lectures, conferences, etc.”
February 27 – April 10, 2014
En acte: Sound workshops “Sound Tag”, MLIS Fête du Livre Jeunesse 2014 (Festival of Books for Young People 2014).
Sessions led by Laurent Grappe and Nicolas Sidoroff (February 27, March 21 and 28, April 4), presentation as part of the Fête du livre (on April 10, 2014), with a fifth-grade class from the Émile Zola primary school in Villeurbanne.

 

Academic year 2014-15

November 20-22, 2014

En acte: Presentation at the JFREM 2014 (Journées Francophones de Recherche en Éducation Musicale) at Cefedem AuRA :

  • Samuel Chagnard: “The conditions for blissfull music-making in the conservatorium: what ‘making music’ means”, see the article in pdf format.
  • Jean-Charles François, Pascal Pariaud, Gilles Laval (PFL)“Encounters, co-construction of sounds, and collective elaboration of the public presentation: Musique Action 2012 project”, see the article in pdf format.
  • Philippe Genet, Pascal Pariaud, Gérald Venturi: “The school through the orchestra – experience in Villeurbanne”.
  • Nicolas Sidoroff: “Two examples of musical practices through the lens of popular education”, see the article in pdf format.
February – March, 2015
En acte: Tour of the USA by the improvisation trio PFL Traject (Pascal Pariaud, Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval): concerts and workshops at the Columbia University, New York, the Manhattan School of Music, New York, New York University, at the Firehouse, Brooklyn, at the University of California San Diego, University of California Santa Barbara, Mills College, Oakland, the Center for New Music, San Francisco and Standford University, Palo Alto.
Summer 2015
En acte: Publication of “Improvisation, Orality, and Writing Revisited” by Jean-Charles François, in Perspectives of New Music, vol. 53 n°2, pp. 67-144.
Publication of the French version of the same article in the paalabres.org site (Edition 2016, station “Timbre”).
July 2015
En acte: Concert of the improvisation trio PFL Traject at the Exploratorium Berlin.

 

Academic year 2015-16

August 18, 2015
En acte: PaaLabRes Encounter with the choreograph Maguy Marin.
February 13-14, 2016
En acte: First weekend of dance-music encounter at Ramdam, Ste Foy-Lès-Lyon. This is an artistic research project aimed at developing common practical tools bringing music and dance together. A certain number of dancers are associated to Ramdam, notably the Compagnie Maguy Marin; the musicians are part of the wider PaaLabRes collective.
May 2016
En acte: Publication of the First edition of the paalabres-org website, “Plan PaaLabRes”.
May 2016
En acte: Publication of “Introducing the Collective PaaLabRes in Lyon/France” by Jean-Charles François in Improfil, Theorie und Praxis improvisierter Musik N°79, Berlin, pp.62-64.
May 7-8, 2016
En acte: Second weekend of the dance-music encounters at Ramdam.

 

Academic year 2016-17

August 2016
En acte: Participation of Gilles Laval (on stage) and Nicolas Sidoroff (associate researcher) to the creation of the performance Passion(s) choreography by Maguy Marin,based on Johann Sebastian Bach’s Saint Matthews Passion.
September 2016 – July 2017
En acte: Project “100 guitars on a drunken boat”, creation by Gilles Laval, inspired by the ocean and Arthur Rimbaud, for 100 electric guitars spread across a large square (co-production Chef Menteur, Ateliers Frappaz, The National Music School of Villeurbanne). The website as resource to the participants was designed by Nicolas Sidoroff and is hosted on PaaLabRes website.
September 9, 2016
En acte: Encounter with Joe Tornabene, musician, improviser.
October 6 2016
En acte: Encounter at the Periscope (Lyon), at the initiative of Alexandre Pierrepon, between The Bridge #4 (Julien Desprez, Rob Mazurek) and PaaLabRes (Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval, Nicolas Sidoroff).
Publication of this encounter on March 20, 2017 on paalabres.org (Edition 2016, station “The Bridge”).
November 26-27, 2016
En acte: Third weekend of the dance-music encounters at Ramdam.
January 17, 2017
En acte: Lecture-presentation by Jean-Charles François of the paalabres.org website at the University of California Irvine, followed by an improvisation workshop with students and faculty.
February 4-5, 2017
En acte: Fourth weekend of the dance-music encounters at Ramdam. Invited guests: Christian Lhopital, visual artist, and Joe Tornabene, musician.
March 24, 2017
En acte: Nicolas Sidoroff, invited by Marie Preston (visual artist) to describe the interactions during a short moment of collective creation of a music piece by 5 people. Broadcasting in the # 7 session of the radio show “Radius” [4’15”-25’25”] by Christian Nyampeta as part of the exhibition “Vocales” (February-April 2017 at the CAC in Bretigny).
March 25-26, 2017
En acte: Fifth weekend of the dance-music encounters at Ramdam. Invited guests: Anan Atoyama, dancer, and David Mambouch, actor, musican and dancer.
June 26, 2017
En acte: Encounter with Rob Mazurek, musician and visual artist.

 

Academic year 2017-18

August 5-6, 2017
En acte: encounters organized by Barre Phillips at Puget-Ville (Var), with improvisers from Germany, Italy and France. Participation of Jean-Charles François and presentation of the website paalabres.org.
September 14-16, 2017
En acte: Paper presentation of “Protocols and schemes of action in collective invention in improvisation” by Jean-Charles François at the Tracking the Creative Process conference, University of Huddersfield (England).
October 13, 2017
En acte: First day of the seminar-workshop organized in Paris by the “sound art and experimental music research group” l’Autre Musique (Institut ACTE – UMR 8218 – Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University – CNRS – Ministry of Culture)): “Observe, Preserve” (Jean-Charles François attending).
November 16, 2017
En acte: Concert with Rob Mazurek as part of his exhibition of serigraphs “Constellation Scores” atURDLA, Villeurbanne (with Anan Atoyama, Samuel Chagnard, Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval, Pascal Pariaud, Nicolas Sidoroff, and Gérald Venturi).
November 20-22, 2017
En acte: Paper presentation of “Nomadic and Transverse Artistic Practices” by Jean-Charles François at the “Aberrant Nuptial” (Dare 2017) on Gilles Deleuze and artistic research at the Orpheus Institute,, Ghent (Belgium).
November 2017
En acte: Publication of the Second edition of the paalabres.org website, “PaaLabRes Map: Graphic Scores”.
November 30, 2017
En acte: Meetings of the dance-music encounter group to review the 5 weekends at Ramdam.
December 21, 2017
En acte: Second day of the seminar-workshop organized by L’Autre Musique (Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University), “Form, Transform” at the Cube, Centre de création numérique, Issy-les-Moulineaux (Nicolas Sidoroff attending).
January 17, 2018
En acte: Second meeting of the dance-music encounter group to review the 5 weekends at Ramdam.
February 7, 2018
En acte: Meeting of the dance-music encounter group to watch videos of the 5 weekends at Ramdam.
March 6, 2018
En acte: Second meeting of the dance-music encounter group to watch videos of the 5 weekends at Ramdam.
March 14 2018
En acte: Third day of the seminar-workshop organized by l’Autre Musique (Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University): “Give, Order”. Workshop led by Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff on graphic scores and improvisation protocols.
March 15, 2018
En acte: “Extended Scores” evening event organized by l’Autre Musique, at the Cube, Centre de création numérique, Issy-les-Moulineaux. “PaaLabRes remix”, lecture-performance by Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff (see the video recording on the channel dedicated to this event).
March 22-24, 2018
En acte: Paper presentation of “Graphic Scores as tools for learning and playing through some form of artistic research” by Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff, at the EPARM 2018 (European Platform for Artistic Research in Music) conference, organized by AEC (Associations Européennes des Conservatoires) in Porto, Portugal.
April 7, 2018
En acte: Day of Public-Action-Research, “Fabricologis” organized by Défluences, at Bricologis, Vaux-en-Velin. Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff participating.
June 22, 2018
En acte: Improvisation concert by Jean-Charles François (percussion), Mitch Heinrich (voice), Christoph Irmer (violin) and Charles Petersohn (synthesizer/piano), “Unerhört… lange Nacht”, Wuppertal (Germany).
June 24, 2018
En acte: Improvisation concert by Jean-Charles François (percussion), Reinhard Hammerschmidt (contrabass), Vlatko Kučan (clarinets/saxophones), “The Art of Improvisation – TAOI 2018/I”, Hamburg (Germany).
July 1st, 2018
En acte: Improvisation concert by Jean-Charles François (percussion), Reinhard Gagel (keyboards), Simon Rose (baryton sax) and Christopher Williams (contrabass), Exploratorium Berlin. Interviews with Reinhard Gagel and Chrstopher Williams published in the paalabres.org third edition.

 

Academic year 2018-19

September 2018 – June 2019
En acte: Second port stopover in Avignon of the “100 guitars on a drunken boat”, creation by Gilles Laval, inspired by the ocean and Arthur Rimbaud, for 100 electric guitars spread across a large square (co-production Chef Menteur, Inouï productions, Arts Vivants en Vaucluse, Avignon townhall, Savarez strings). The website as resource to the participants was designed by Nicolas Sidoroff and is hosted on PaaLabRes website.
September 7-9, 2018
En acte: CEPI (Centre Européen POUR l’Improvisation) encounters organized by Barre Phillips at Puget-Ville (Var), with improvisers from Switzerland, Germany, Italy and France. Participation of Jean-Charles François.
December 2018
En acte: Publication of two articles by Jean-Charles François in Improfil, Theorie und Praxis improvisierter Musik N°81, Berlin: a) “PaaLabRes 2017 Map: Graphic Scores”; b) “Report on Three Recent Conferences”.
February 21-22, 2019
En acte: Paper presentation, “Multiplicity of Agency in the Arts – Ownership and Usership” by Jean-Charles François, at the seminar “From Authorship and Spectatorship to Usership in Music” at theOrpheus Institute, Ghent (Belgium).
April 26, 2019
En acte : Encounter with Yves Favier, trombonist, technical director at ENSATT (École Nationale Supérieur des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre) in Lyon, and Gyorgy Kurtag jr., composer and improviser, coordinator art/science at SCRIM (Studio de Création et de Recherche en Informatique et Musiques Expérimentales) in Bordeaux, and for PaaLabRes, Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval and Nicolas Sidoroff.

 

Academic year 2019-20

August 6, 2019
En acte: Encounter with Cecil Lytle, pianist, ex-Provost of Thurgood Marshall College, University of California San Diego and for PaalabRes, Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff.
September 3, 2019
En acte: Encounter with Vlatko Kučan, clarinetist/saxophonist, improviser, Hamburg Musikhochschule, and Reinhard Gagel, pianist, improviser, visual artist, scholar Exploratorium Berlin, and for PaalabRes, Samuel Chagnard, Jean-Charles François, Karine Hahn, Gilles Laval, Pascal Pariaud, Nicolas Sidoroff and Gérald Venturi.
September 6-8, 2019
En acte: CEPI (Centre Européen Pour l’Improvisation) dance/music improvisation encounters in Valcivières (Haute-Loire) organized by Barre Phillips. Jean-Charles François and Gilles Laval participating. Lecture by Jean-Charles François on “Research Artistic and Improvisation”.
January 30, 2020
En acte: Lecture-concert SPIIC by Jean-Charles François at the Hamburg Musikhochschule (see vlatkokucan.de).
January 31 – February 2, 2020
En acte: Participation of Jean-Charles François, improvising and reading a paper “Artistic Research and Improvisation” to the conference on “Current Research and Theory – A Symposium in SOUP Research Design”, Exploratorium Berlin.
February 13-14, 2020
En acte: Seminar “Pragmatism and Artistic Research” at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium. Lecture-performance by Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff on “Experience Experiment and Plethora of Functions”.

 

Academic year 2020-21

August 29-31, 2020
En acte: Residency “Common action, research in working-class neighborhoods. Cooperation, experimentation, co-creation”, launching, Saint-Denis, with the participation of Nicolas Sidoroff.
September 17-19, 2020
En acte: Residency “Common action, research in working-class neighborhoods. Cooperation, experimentation, co-creation”, in Mermoz-Sud neighborhood, Lyon, with the participation of Nicolas Sidoroff (organized by Thomas Arnera).
September 2020
En acte: Publication of the “Guide Touristique Cartes PaaLabRes” by Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff in L’Autre Musique Revue, N°5 – Scores (printed text and audio recording).
November 24, 2020
En acte: Conference “Arts Dialogs, New Technologies, Music, Stage”, DANTEMUS, Université Côte d’Azur. Virtual lecture-performance “no tech -> echo -> ecotone” by Vlatko Kučan (Hamburg) and Jean-Charles François (Lyon) (in teleconference).
December 3,10 and 17, 2020
En acte: Seminar (by teleconference) SPIIC, Hamburg Musikhochschule organized by Vlatko Kučan, by Jean-Charles François. Presentation in three parts of the Grand Collage of the PaaLabRes 3rd edition, “Break Down the Walls”.
December 2020
En acte: Publication of the article “Texts and Improvisation: Glossolalia, Theatre, Sound Poetry, or Narration” by Jean-Charles François in Improfil, Theorie und Praxis improvisierter Musik N°83, Berlin.
January 23-25, 2021
En acte : Residency “Common action, research in working-class neighborhoods. Cooperation, experimentation, co-creation”, Jean Bart/Guynemer neighborhood (Saint-Pol-sur-Mer, Dunkerque agglomeration) and Degroot (Téteghem). Participation by Nicolas Sidoroff (org. Collectif En Rue).
March 2021
En acte: Publication of the Third edition of the paalabres.org website “Break Down the Walls”.
May 7, 2021
En acte: Interview PaaLabRes (Samuel Chagnard, Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval, Pascal Pariaud, Nicolas Sidoroff,) for the European project Fast45 (Futures Art School Trends 2045).
June 1st, 2021
En acte: Constitutive General Assembly of the association “Ouvrir l’Horizon, Auvergne Rhône-Alpes”, developing artistic baskets, Nicolas Sidoroff, founding member and secretary.
July 26-30, 2021
En acte: Residency at the Logelloù, in Penvéran (Brittany), with Jean-François Charles, Kristian Sarau, Nicolas Sidoroff: cinema-concert with “Kino Pravda” by Dziga Vertov, public presentation on July 30th.

 

Academic year 2021-22

August 26-28, 2021
En acte: CEPI encounters (Centre Européen Pour l’Improvisation) in Valcivières, Puy-de-Dôme.
Lectures, practices and performances around improvisation.
August 26 at 3:00 pm: Proposition by Yves Favier, Jean-Charles François and György Kurtag, « From Solo to Tutti : Intrans-Intrus ».
August 28 à 7:00 pm: Performance in situ, Les petites Versades.
November 4, 2021
En acte: Yves Favier and György Kurtag jr. come to Lyon as part of the “alàp road trip” Bordeaux-Lyon-Lecco-Lyon-Bordeaux. Encounter day with PaaLabRes at the Cefedem AuRA from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm: music and dance improvisations alternating with discussions on artistic practices after Covid confinement and about the 4th Edition of the site paalabres.org. Presents: Anan Atoyama, Guillaume Dussably, Jean-Charles François, Clémentine Gasnier, Gilles Laval, Denis Marriott, Pascal Pariaud, Nicolas Sidoroff, Omar Toujib, Gérald Venturi, Mélanie Virot.
November 9, 2021
En acte: Yves Favier and György Kurtag return from Lecco (Italy). Day of discussions with Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval and Nicolas Sidoroff on the future of CEPI and the project of a collective lecture/performance to be presented at the “Innovation In Music Conference” in Sweden. Visit of Friche Lamartine (Lyon).
February 13, 2022
En acte: Dance-music improvisation session with Anan Atoyama, Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval, Frank Leibovici, Marcelo Sepulveda, and Nicolas Sidoroff, Le Magasin, Saint-Etienne.
March 3-5, 2022
En acte: International Free Improvisation Encounters “Risquer le Vide” (taking the risk of emptiness), Fort Royal, Ile Sainte Marguerite, near Cannes. Organized by Inés Perez-Wilke, Côte d’Azur University. Participation by Jean-Charles François.
March 19, 2022
En acte: Concert Promenade “Les Climats en musique : une découverte inattendue” (Climats in music: an unexpected discovery), Beaune. Concert by Ensemble Aleph. Performance by Jean-Charles François of Slam des Climats. Performance of An Tasten by Mauricio Kagel, arrangement by Dominique Clément.
March 22-25, 2022
En acte:Visit of the Roskilde University, and of the Rhythmic Music Conservatory (RMC, meeting with Morten Tandrup, Chistian Taagehøj and Maria Westvall) in Copenhagen, by Nicolas Sidoroff (with Sandrine Desmurs, within Erasmus mobility program with the Cefedem AuRA).
March 31-April 2, 2022
En acte: Residency “Common action, research in working-class neighborhoods. Cooperation, experimentation, co-creation”, Blosne neighborhood (in Rennes, Brittany). Particpation by Nicolas Sidoroff (org. Benjamin Roux).
April 16-20, 2022
En acte: Preparation and performance (April 20) of the lecture/performance “Edges, Ecotones, PaaLabRes” at the Cefedem AuRA in Lyon, to be presented at the “Innovative Music Conference” in Stockholm (June 17-19). For financial reasons we have been unable to attend this conference. Yves Favier, Jean-Charles François, György Kurtag, Gilles Laval and Nicolas Sidoroff.
May 4, 2022
En acte: Encounter with Pom Bouvier-b at St Julien Molin Molette (in the Pilat mountain). Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff.
May 13, 2022
En acte: Presentation of the journal Agencements, Recherches et pratiques en expérimentation, performance by Nicolas Sidoroff « We’ve written the neighborhood », at the Théâtre Gérard Philipe (TGP), Saint-Denis.
May 29, 2022
En acte : Residency of Anan Atoyama at the Ramdam (near Lyon) on the issues of migration. Dance/music improvisations. Participation by Jean-Charles François.

Academic year 2022-23

September 23-24, 2022
En acte: European Encounters of Improvisation Dance and Music e « Dé-Rives… Out of borders », oragnized by Emmanuelle Pépin at the Théâtre National de Nice. Active Scenography, a proposal by Yves Favier, Jean-Charles François and Görgy Kurtag (September 23 at 10:15 pm).
September 27, 2022
En acte: Encounter between Simon Rose, musician improviser, author, Berlin, and PaaLabRes at the Cefedem AuRA, Lyon. Lecture to the Cefedem students, followed by a PaaLabRes improvisation session.
November 30, 2022
En acte: Defense of Joris Cintéro doctoral thesis in Educational Sciences (Lyon II University), « La fabrique territoriale de la démocratisation des enseignements artistiques » (The territorial fabric of the democratization of arts education), amphitheater of the Maison Internationale des Langues et des Cultures (MILC), Lyon.
December 13, 2022
En acte: PaaLabRes improvisation session at the Cefedem AuRA, Lyon. With Anan Atoyama, Jean-Charles François, Nicolas Sidoroff, and Cefedem students.
January 5-8, 2023
En acte: CEPI Encounters at the Budapest Music Center, Hungary. With Jànos Bali, Laurent Charles, Yves Favier, Reinhard Gagel, Kristin Guttenberg, Kovàcs Kornél, György Kurtag, Emmanuelle Pépin, Karen Schlimp, composition students from the Music Academy in Budapest, and Modern Art Orchestra, Budapest.
En acte: On January 8, concert at the Budapest Music Center, with all participants to the encounters.
Juanuary 24, 2023
En acte: PaaLabRes encounters with Lionel Garcin and Emmanuelle Pépin at the Cefedem AuRA, Lyon. Lecture/performance “SOUND – listening – GESTURE in Improvisation” (a video of the performance was done in presence of the Cefedem students and teachers, to be published in the 4th Edition of paalabres.org). Followed by a collective improvisation session with PaalabRes members and their friends, and the Cefedem students.
February 27 2023
En acte: PaaLabRes collective improvisation session organized by Pascal Pariaud at the École Nationale de Musique, Villeurbanne.
March 3-4, 2023
En acte: Open meeting space for improvisation organized by ADQ (“Ainsi Danse Qui”) and Omar Toujib at “Art et Scène”, Lyon. Participation by Nicolas Sidoroff.
March 24-26, 2023
En acte: CEPI Research Group Groupe session organized by Emmanuelle Pépin, in Cabasse (Var). With Jean-Charles François, Lionel Garcin, Amanda Gardone, György Kurtag, Emmanuelle Pépin et Blaise Powell. And for the last day with the presence of Pierre Vion, as observer.
April 1st, 2023
En acte: Workshop lead by Anan Atoyama as part of her residency at Ramdam near Lyon. Dance/music improvisation. Participation by Jean-Charles François.
June 21, 2023
En acte: “40 guitares sur un bateau ivre” (40 guitars on a drunken ship) in Leipzig, Germany. Rock and contemporary concert composed by Gilles Laval. In collaboration with the “Office franco-allemand pour la jeunesse” (Youth exchange office France-Germany).
July 11 2023
En acte: “40 guitares sur un bateau ivre” (40 guitars on a drunken ship) in Villeurbanne, France. Rock and contemporary concert composed by Gilles Laval. In collaboration with the “Office franco-allemand pour la jeunesse” (Youth exchange office France-Germany).

Academic year 2023-24

September 11-17, 2023
En acte: Conference “Circonférences de l’improvisation, faire corps autrement” (Improvisation Circumference, creating a body in a different way), organized by the Côte d’Azur University, Alice Godfroy and Jean-François Truber. Performances by Laurent Charles, Jean-Charles François, Lionel Garcin, Catherine Jauniaux, Lily Klara, Claudia Pelliccia, Emmanuelle Pépin, Blaise Powell, and Sten Rudstrøm.
September 26, 2023
En acte: PaaLabRes encounter with Pom Bouvier-b at the Cefedem AuRA. Listening walk in Lyon with the Cefedem students. Followed by dialogs with the students and a PaaLabRes improvisation session.
October 1st, 2023
En acte: Performance Pom Bouvier-b, Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff in St Julien Molin Molette, at Lyponne, the home of Swan. Listening walk for one hour in the surrounding countryside, followed by improvisation in the barn.
October 2-6, 2023
En acte: WhatIIIF? Rotterdam, improvisation encounters, dance, music and theater, on the concept of space, at WORM, Rotterdam. Participation by Jean-Charles François (with Yves Favier, György Kurtag and Emmanuelle Pépin).
November 18-19, 2023
En acte: Residence of Anan Atoyama at Ramdam, near Lyon on the issues of migration. Dance/music improvisations. Participation by Jean-Charles François.
November 29, 2023
En acte: Defense of Karine Hahn doctoral thesis in Sociology, “Les pratiques (ré)sonnantes du territoire de Dieulefit (Drôme) : une autre manière de faire la musique” (“The (Re)sonant Practices in the Dieulefit Territory, Drôme: Another Way for Making Music”), at the Centre Norbert Elias, Vieille Charité, Campus EHESS, Marseilles.
December 9, 2023
En acte: Residence of Anan Atoyama at Ramdam, near Lyon on the issues of migration. Dance/music improvisations. Participation by Jean-Charles François.
February 2-4, 2024
En acte: Conference “Musicians’s Perspectives on Improvisation”, Exploratorium Berlin. Presentation of Jean-Charles François: “The Empty-Full or Full-Empty of Artistic Research on Musical Improvisation.”
March 14, 2024
En acte: Publication of the book Autour de l’improvisation, (Around improvisation), Thyrse 22, texts compiled by Inés Perez-Wilke, Patricia Kuypers and Rogerio Costa, Harmattan. Article by Jean-Charles François “Les métamorphoses du vide”, pp. 147-160.
March 26, 2024
En acte: Seminar on “Current research on the transmission of artistic practices” (CNSMD, Cefedem AuRA, CFMI, INSPÉ, Lyon 1 and 2 University, and CMTRA): Presentation by Karine Hahn of her thesis “The (re)sonant practices of the Dieulefit region (Drôme): another way of making music” at Cefedem AuRA, Lyon.
March 28-30. 2024
En acte: Anan Atoyama’s residence at Ramdam, near Lyon on the issues of migration. Dance/music improvisations. Participation by Jean-Charles François.
April 5-7, 2024
En acte: CEPI research encounters in Bordeaux with Yves Favier, Jean-Charles François, Donatien Garnier and György Kurtag.
En acte: Performance on April 7 at the home of Donatien Garnier.
June 17, 2024
En acte: Lecture/performance of the PaaLabRes collective at the CNSMD in Lyon, “Journées d’Etude de la Formation à l’Enseignement”, with Anan Atoyama, Samuel Chagnard, Jean-Charles François, Gilles Laval, Pascal Pariaud, Nicolas Sidoroff and Gérald Venturi.
June 25, 2024
En acte : Seminar on “Current research on the transmission of artistic practices” (CNSMD, Cefedem AuRA, CFMI, INSPÉ, Lyon 1 and 2 University, and CMTRA): Jean-Paul Filiod and Fernando Segui on the feeling of illegitimacy and legitimacy in teaching music among current teachers in schools and music schools. At INSPÉ, Lyon 1 University.

Academic year 2024-25

October 12, 2024
En acte: Project “Island without Sea” by Anan Atoyama at the Ramdam (near Lyon) on the issues of migration. Dance and music improvisation. Participation by Jean-Charles François.
October 15, 2024
En acte: Performance “Island without Sea” with Anan Atoyama at the University Lyon 2 Amphitheater as part of the Festival Contre-Sens. Participation by the audience invited on stage.
October 24-27, 2024
En acte: “Sound – Light – Dance” CEPI research encounters in Hamburg. Session organized by Vlatko Kučan at the Musikhochschule, the György Ligeti Center and Resonanz Raum. With Katrine Bethge (lighting artist), Katarzyna Brzezinska (dance), John Eckhardt (doublebass), Jean-Charles François (percussion), Nicolai Hein (electric guitar), Vlatko Kučan (clarinets, saxophones), György Kurtag (electronics), Hania Mariam Luthufi (voice), Susanne Martin (dancee), Tam Thi Pham (dan bau), Matheus Souza (electronics).
En acte: October 26, concert at Resonanz Raum.
November 5, 2024
En acte: Presentation of issue #10 of the journal Agencements, Recherches et pratiques sociales en expérimentation at the “Friche du 7”, Thomas Arnera and Nicolas Sidoroff.
February 1st, 2025
En acte: Seminar on “Current research on the transmission of artistic practices” (CNSMD, Cefedem AuRA, CFMI, INSPÉ, University Lyon 1 and 2, CMTRA): Marie Preston, Visual arts, Paris 8 University, at the INSPÉ of Lyon, Presentation of her project “Maisonner”.
March 7, 2025
En acte : Evening tribute to Barre Phillips, Théâtre de la Vignette, Montpellier III University, organized by No Separan, CIBT “Art and Politics” commission (J-Kristoff Camps, Carole Rieussec, and Patrice Soletti). Participation by Jean-Charles François.
March 13, 2025
En acte: Student’s Night at the Beaux-Arts Museum, Lyon. Improvisation with Christophe Baert, Jean-Charles François, Florentin Hay.
March 19, 2025
En acte : Seminar on “Current research on the transmission of artistic practices” (CNSMD, Cefedem AuRA, CFMI, INSPÉ, Lyon 1 and 2 University, and CMTRA): Alexandre Robert, “Le genre en jeu. Styles de pratique et improvisation musicale” (“Gender issues at stake. Styles of practice and musical improvisation”), at the MILC, Lyon 2 University.
March 22-23, 2025
En acte: Anan Atoyama’s residence at Ramdam, near Lyon, on the issues of climatic migration. Dance/music improvisation. Two PaaLabRes days, with Christophe Baert, Jean-Charles François, Cécile Guiller, Pascal Pariaud, Nicolas Sidoroff, and Tam Thi Pham.
March 25, 2025
En acte: PaaLabRes encounter with Tam Thi Pham, Vietnamese musician living in Hambourg, Germany. Lecture/performance at the Cefedem AuRA in Lyon: “Traditional practice and free improvisation on the dan bau” (video of the performance in view of a publication in the 4th edition of paalabres.org). Followed by a collective improvisation session with PaalabRes collective and friends, and the Cefedem students.
April 17, 2025
En acte: Seminar on “Current research on the transmission of artistic practices” ((CNSMD, Cefedem AuRA, CFMI, INSPÉ, Lyon 1 and 2 University, and CMTRA): Jean-Charles François, “Le vide et le plein de l’improvisation ‘libre’” (“The empty-full of free improvisation”), at the CNSMD in Lyon.
May 3, 2025
En acte: Performance “Island without Sea” with Anan Atoyama, Jean-Charles François and audience participation, Festival Popodaï #4, at the Maison des Ateliers, Cornilon, Mens, Isère.
May 13, 2025
En acte: “TiteBibli en Friche” (TinyLibrary in Fringe). Release of the 2nd Edition of Nom de code « déployer » at Cefedem AuRA, Lyon. Thomas Arnera and Nicolas Sidoroff.
May 22, 2025
En acte: Seminar on “Current research on the transmission of artistic practices” (CNSMD, Cefedem AuRA, CFMI, INSPÉ, Lyon 1 and 2 University, and CMTRA): Nicolas Sidoroff, presentation of his doctorate thesis, “Gestes de recherche de personnes et de groupes musiquants (des pratiques par leurs lisières)” (Research gestures from people and musicking groups (edges practices) at the Cefedem AuRA, Lyon.
May 26, 2025
En acte: PaaLabRes encounter with Chris Dobrian, composer, Emeritus professor at University of California Irvine and Yung Wha Son, composer, at the Cefedem AuRA in Lyon.
June 14-15, 2025
En acte : Tribute to Barre Phillips, Sainte Philomène, Puget-Ville, Var. CEPI improvisation encounters. Participation by Jean-Charles François.
June 25, 2025
En acte: Seminar on “Current research on the transmission of artistic practices” (CNSMD, Cefedem AuRA, CFMI, INSPÉ, Lyon 1 and 2 University, and CMTRA): Review of the 2024-25 academic year, preparation for the next season. At the CNSMD in Lyon.

Guide of the 4th PaaLabRes Edition (2025)

 

English

Access to 4th Edition Editorial.

Access to Contributors of the 4th Edition “Report on Practices” (2025)


French

Access to the French original version: Guide de la quatrième édition 2025.

Access to the French original version of the 4th Edition Editorial in French


 

Guide of the 4th PaaLabRes Edition,
“Report on Practices”

Summary:

Home Page
Contributions
Aknowledgements
List of Contributors of the Fourth Edition 2025, “Report on Practices”
 


Home Page

The first photo you see on the home page is a rubble stone taken by Yves Favier.

The graphics appearing on the home page over this photo were created by Leonie Sens.

If you move the cursor over the photo, six large leaves appear representing categories that give access to contributions:

  1. Otherwards/Return. This category concerns artist’s back-and-forth journeys between Africa and the rest of the world. It contains three contributions at present.
  2. InDiscipline – Flux. The interrelations between artistic disciplines, which tend in improvisation forms to be « undisciplined ». For the moment, this category contains two contributions that address the relationships between dance and the environment and between dance and music.
  3. Fabulate – InQuest. This category addresses research concerns ranging from academic formalization to more informal approaches. At present, it contains only one article.
  4. Context – Fabbrik. This category includes three articles that focus on developing of situations based on a particular context, encouraging participants to invent their own practices.
  5. Electro – Tinkering. Two articles focus on the use of electronic and digital technologies in artistic practices.
  6. Trajects. This category concerns projects that take place in different locations that are more or less distant and involve for the participants journeys allowing for reflection before, after or between actions taking place at different locations. Contributions in this category are in progress.

Three names (Éditorial, Guide, Activités) appear at the bottom right of the screen. Clicking on them gives access to a) the 4th Edition Editorial and to the list of contributors with their short biographies; b) the user Guide to this edition; and c) the Activities of the members of the PaaLabRes collective since 2021.

Passing the cursor over one of the leaves in the 6 categories causes a bunch of smaller leaves to grow, some containing the contributors’ initials. To get a more precise idea of each contribution, simply bring the cursor over one of the leaves with initials, and an information bubble will appear. You can then click on it, and you will see that contribution.
 

Contributions

Otherwards/Return:

  1. DMK: “Interview of Djely Madi Kouyaté”. Interviews of the Guinean musician Djely Madi Kouyaté by Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff, with Olivier François present, Paris (2022-2023). The life story of a griot and balafon player who grew up in a village in Guinea, played in the Kotéba ensemble in Ivory Caoast, touring Africa and Europe, and then moved to Paris where he played with numerous African music groups.
  2. LL: Lukas Ligeti, « Instruments secrets, destinations secrètes », translation of an article published in English, “Secret Instruments, Secret Destinations” in Arcana II, Musicians on Music, (John Zorn ed. 2007). A very detailed account of his drum set and electronic music practice in Africa (Ivory Coast, the Beta Foly ensemble, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Burkina Faso) and of his compositions for contemporary music ensembles (Amandina Percussion Group, Budapest, and London Sinfonietta).
  3. FK: Jean-Charles François, “Commentaries on Famoudou Konaté’s Book Mémoires d’un musicien africain, Ma vie – mon djembé – ma culture ». Famoudou Konaté is an internationally well-known djembe player and has written this book (published in French in 2022) in collaboration with Thomas Ott who “was a university professor of music pedagogy in Berlin”.

 
InDiscipline – Flux:

  1. BW: “The Body Weather Farm (1985-90 period), Encounter with Katerina Bakatsaki, Oguri and Christine Quoiraud” (with the participation of Jean-Charles François et Nicolas Sidoroff for PaaLabRes). Account of the creation by Min Tanaka of the farm in Japan and the relationship between dance and the environment, and between dance and music within the concept of “Body Weather”, that is, like the weather, which changes continuously. For the three protagonists, the encounter with Min Tanaka and the creation of the Body Weather farm were very important events during their youth, which each of them remembers in their own way. This founding element subsequently gave rise to different life pathways for them, yet each of them extended with great consistency Tanaka’s initial philosophy.
  2. EP/LG: Emmanuelle Pépin and Lionel Garcin, « LE SON – l’écoute – LE GESTE dans l’improvisation » (“SOUND – listening – GESTURE in improvisation”), video of the lecture/performance that took place at the Cefedem AuRA in January 2023. In addition, we are publishing the texts that Emmanuelle used as basis for this performance, the text that was actually spoken during this performance, and the transcript of the discussions with Cefedem students and teachers following the performance.

 
Fabulate – InQuest:

  1. NS/JCF: Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff, “Situation of Collective Practice Aiming at Opening Meaningful Debate”. Workshop led by the two authors as part of the seminar-workshop on graphic scores “Partitions #3 ‘Donner-ordonner’” of l’Autre musique group (Institute ACTE – Paris 1 University), on March 14, 2018, organized by Frédéric Mathevet and Gérard Pelé. Three study days were organized in Paris during the 2017-18 academic year. The article contains the transcript of the workshop discussions, audio excerpts from the collective improvisations, and commentaries by the two authors.

 
Context – Fabbrik:

  1. KH: Karine Hahn « L’épisode du métronome » (“The Metronome Episode”), extract from her doctoral thesis in sociology « Les pratiques (ré)sonnantes du territoire de Dieulefit, Drôme : une autre manière de faire la musique » (“The (Re)sonant Practices in the Dieulefit Territory, Drôme: Another Way for Making Music”, 2023). A description of the democratic practices of Tapacymbal Fanfare, as part of the CAEM music school in Dieulefit.
  2. CduC: “The Tale of the ‘Tale’”, an account of the creation of the performance “Le Conte d’un futur commun” by Louis Clément (project instigator), Delphine Descombin (storyteller) Yovan Girard (music) and Maxime Hurdequint (drawings). The texts are the result of four separate interviews with each artist rconducted in 2023 by Nicolas Sidoroff and Jean-Charles François.
  3. GSC: “Nomadic Collective Creation”, project by the Orchestre National Urbain (artistic director Giacomo Spica Capobianco) as part of the Biennale Hors Norme 2023, at Grandes Voisines, Lyon CNSMD and Lyon 2 University. Encounters and mediations between young refugees and conservatorium and university students, around shared artistic practices (music, dance, painting). Accounts by Joris Cintéro and Jean-Charles François, with a video by Giacomo Spica Capobianco and Sébastien Leborgne.

 
Electro – Tinkering:

  1. C/G: Encounter with Vincent Raphaël Carinola and Jean Geoffroy in February 2023 (with Nicolas Sidoroff and Jean-Charles François for PaaLabRes). The discussion concerned their collaboration around two pieces by Carinola: Toucher and Virtual Rhizome. The contribution is accompanied by an article by the two authors: “On Notational Spaces in Interactive Music”.
  2. WB: Warren Burt, “The Past Has a Way of Catching up with You, or The Democratisation of Computer Music, 10 Years On.” Account of the technological transformations that took place during a lifetime (from 1967 to today) devoted to irrelevance in music, and democratic access to electroacoustic music making.

 

Aknowledgements

We would like to thank all the people who volunteered to help produce this new edition of PaaLabRes, “Report on Practices”.

Production of the edition “Report on Practices”: Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff, with the help of Anan Atoyama, Samuel Chagnard, Karine Hahn, Gilles Laval and Pascal Pariaud.

Translations: Jean-Charles François with help of Deepl (free version) and Jacques Moreau. Thanks to Anne-Lise François and Emilie McBain for proofreading some of the English translations. Thanks to Guillaume Dussably and Monica Jordan for proofreading French texts.

>strong>Transcriptions of interviews: Jean-Charles François with help of “Buzz”. Thanks to Christine Quoiraud for her help in transcribing the interviews concerning the Body Weather Farm. Thanks to Samuel Chagnard for transcribing the discussions between Cefedem students and Emmanuelle Pépin and Lionel Garcin.

Video: Thanks to Ralph Marcon and Nicolas Sidoroff for filming of the lecture/performance by Emmanuelle Pépin and Lionel Garcin. This video was edited by Jean-Charles François and the sound by Samuel Chagnard.

Home Page: Thanks to Leonie Sens for the graphic design of the home page, and to Yves Favier for the original photography.
 


List of contributors of the 2025 Edition,
“Report on Practices”

Katerina Bakatsaki

Katerina Bakatsaki is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher of Butoh who works in Amsterdam. Her work stems from the Body Weather organization, founded by Min Tanaka and developed within the Maï-juku Performance Company in Japan, to which Katerina was permanently associated from 1986 to 1993. Since 1996, she has been working with Frans van der Ven, a Butoh dancer and theatre creator. She also teaches in the School for the Development of New Dance of the Amsterdam School for the Arts.

 

Warren Burt

Warren Burt is an Australia-based composer of American birth. He is also a performer, video artist, sound poet, writer, builder of electronic and acoustic instruments, and more. He is known for composing in a wide variety of new music styles, ranging from acoustic music, electroacoustic music, sound art installations to text-based music.

warrenburt.com
 

Vincent-Raphaël Carinola

Vincent-Raphaël Carinola received most of his musical training at the CRR of Toulouse, then at the CNSMD of Lyon, with Philippe Manoury and Denis Lorrain. He writes works for instrumental formations with or without electroacoustic systems, acousmatic works, for the stage, installations, etc. His works are the result of a close complicity with very committed musician friends and ensembles. Doctor in Musicology, he teaches composition associated with new technologies in the École Supérieure de Musique Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and the Saint-Étienne University. He has recently published Composition, Technology and New Arrangements of Music Categories, Presses Universitaires de Saint-Etienne.

vrcarinola.com
 

Joris Cintéro

Joris Cintéro holds a doctorate in Educational Sciences. His work focuses on the processes of developing and implementating of territorial public policy, as well as their impact on the work teachers in the cultural and public-school sectors. He is currently a professor of Educational Sciences at the CNSMD of Lyon, and a part time lecturer at Lumière Lyon II University and Jean Monnet University in Saint-Etienne.

Université Lyon 2
 

Louis Clément

Louis Clément graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris Val de Seine. He is interested in video projection and mapping since 2013 and created “For L” with composer Dominique Clément, an reactive audio-video scenography that toured all over Europe. He reflects on audience involvement with the MicroMesoMacro installation and TheLiveDrawingProject. Since 2015, Louis has been creating geolocated works where the audience members discover visual art works and musical interventions in unexpected places. He is also general stage manager for several ensembles (Ensemble Aleph, Nomos) and video director for museum works in Lyon (Musée d’Art Contemporain, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Biennale d’Art Contemporain).

louisclement.fr
 

Delphine Descombin

Delphine Descombin is a storyteller and trapeze artist. She grew up in Saône-et-Loire surrounded by green fields and big oak trees. Aware of the changes taking place in the world, she favors open-green stories that are echoing what moves us at a given moment. Challenging our certitudes by exploring intimacy and frailty, her tales question our way of being with the living. To tell allow her to propose different views on the world. An enthusiast self-taught of performing arts, she has enriched her work along the way through encounters, learning storytelling with the works of artists she likes: Pépito Matéo, Myriam Pellicane, Christian Massas, Ludor Citrik, Marie-France Marbach. In 2017, she created the Compagnie Grim. She has performed in a 5-meter-high felt yurt, an unusual space of encounters that she invented and built to suspend a trapeze, and to propose her performances. As a solo storyteller or accompanied by musicians or circus artists, she performs for all audiences.

 

Jean-Charles François

Jean-Charles François, percussionist, composer, improvisor, member of PaaLabRes. During the 1960s he worked in Paris as a freelance musician, then from 1972 to 1990, professor at the University of California San Diego. In 1990 he moved back to France to create the Cefedem AuRA in Lyon, a music teacher training center. He played for many years with the improvisation group KIVA, the Ensemble Aleph, and with the improvisation trio PFL Traject. Since 2017, he participates to many improvisation encounters as part of CEPI (created by the double-bass player Barre Phillips).

paalabres.org
 

Olivier François

Olivier François, percussionist, initiated into West African percussion by Louis César Ewandé, he participated to Ewandé’s “Percussions Ensemble” project. In 1986 he first met Mamady Kéïta (Djembé Fola) and in 1989 Famoudou Konaté. He accompanied choreographers Jams Sylla, Alphonse Soumah, Norma Claire, Georges Momboye during numerous workshops in France and in foreign countries. Since 1990, he travelled extensively in Africa with Souleyman Koly and the Kotéba ballets. In 2000, he moved to Guinea, where he worked with many musicians and dancers and participated in the creation of the “Percussions de Kouroussa” project. He now lives near Paris.

 

Lionel Garcin

Lionel Garcin: “Sound matter is in a way his raw material, his clay, his block of marble… His instrument is the saxophone. A wind instrument, or so they say. But of which he knows how to exploit all the sound facets. Even some of them, sometime, are quite unexpected… The saxophone most often leads him towards the jazz side of music; the sounds he produces on his instruments and their so peculiar rhythms situate him more on the side of acoustic research dear to contemporary music.” (JM Lecarpentier)
He has been playing for about fifteen years with Barre Phillips from a trio (with Émilie Lesbros) to large ensembles (EMIR and EMIR danse). Today, you can hear him play with the groups NOP with Frantz Loriot, Le Concert Perché with Laurent Charles, Two Level Lunch with Emmanuel Cremer, Domininic Lash and Alex Ward, and soon in The Bridge #12 with Christian Provost, David Boykin, Nicole Mitchell and Christophe Rocher.

Lionel Garcin
 

Jean Geoffroy

Jean Geoffroy forged his own pathway in the world of percussion. Principal timpanist with the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris from 1985 to 2000 and member of the Menuhin Foundation, Jean Geoffroy is a tireless artist who has participated as a soloist on more than 35 CDs and DVDs. The dedicatee of numerous pieces, he performed in the world’s most prestigious music festivals, and has been giving master classes and lectures around the world for over 30 years. Passionate about teaching, professor at the CNSMD of Lyon and Paris, he is currently director of the Department of Creation at the CNSMD of Lyon: the Espace Transversal de Création. From 1995 to 2004, he worked in the educational department of Irma, where he was also a member of the reading committee. He was artistic director of the Centre Eklekto in Geneva from 2006 to 2013 and artistic director of Les Percussions de Strasbourg from 2015 to 2017. Jean Geoffroy is guest conductor of the Ensemble Mésostics. In 2017, together with Christophe Lebreton, they co-realized the Light Wall System, lighting interface of motion capture, in collaboration with Grame (national center for musical creation). In 2019, this collaboration resulted in the creation of LiSiLog, an association dedicated to artistic innovation and transmission.

lisilog.com
 

Yovan Girard

After studying classical violin, he studied jazz at the Regional Conservatorium in Paris and Yovan Girard obtained his diploma in 2010. He was invited to play with the trio Didier Lockwood and performed alongside the singers Emel Mathlouti and Bachard Mar Khalifé. In 2015, he joined the Franck Tortiller Mco collective. Since 2017, he is the singer of the Ethio-jazz group Kunta. His interest in different aesthetics and his attraction to improvisation have allowed him to live through a diversity of experiences as a violinist, composer but as well as rapper. In the music of the “Conte d’un future commun” (Tale of a Common Future), which he composed, his pre-recorded sound loops are modified in real time and are augmented by his improvisations.

 

Karine Hahn

Karine Hahn is a harpist, sociologist, and head of the pedagogy department for specialized music education (FEM) at the CNSMD in Lyon. In October 2023, she defended her doctoral thesis in sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Science Sociale, on « Les pratiques (ré)sonnantes du territoire de Dieulefit, Drôme, une autre manière de faire la musique : implications, engagements et théorisation par la fabrication ordinaire de musiques » (“The (Re)sonant Practices in the Dieulefit Territory, Drôme: Another Way for Making Music: Implications, Commitments, and Theorization through the Ordinary Production of Music”). As a musician, Karine Hahn is involved in various collectives (PaaLabRes, Inouï production, VMC–Giacomo Spica) that seek to link musical practice and reflexivity, creation and involvement of various actors during creation residencies.

oicrm.org
 

Maxime Hurdequint

Maxime Hurdequint. After completing his education through different internships in Denmark, Mexico, and then Japan, he worked as an architect in Paris. In 2018 he founded the MURA Agency in Lyon. Because “buildings take too long to complete”, he is also an illustrator: “I like drawing because it’s much quicker to finish a drawing!”
“The traveler is a constant source of perplexity. His place is everywhere and nowhere. He lives on stolen moments, reflections, small present instants, opportunities, and crumbs. Here are those crumbs…” (Nicolas Bouvier, Chroniques japonaises)
His drawings are engraved instances of his time spent walking, riding a scooter, rowing a boat, traveling in a bus, watching and deciphering the landscapes during his journeys.

artsper.com
 

Famoudou Konaté

Famoudou Konaté is a master of the djembé from Guinea, West Africa. Rooted in the traditions of his Malinké homeland, where music and rhythm are woven in the fabric of life. During 25 years he was the principal djembe soloist with the Ballets Africains of the Republic of Guinea. He then became a freelance musician and teacher sharing his music through concerts and workshops around the world.

editions-harmattan.fr
 

Djely Madi Kouyaté

Djely Madi Kouyaté is a musician, balafon player and guitarist living in Paris, originally from a griot family in Kamponi, in the Boké region of Guinea. He joined Souleyman Koly’s Ballet Kotéba in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, with which he toured extensively in Western Africa and Europe. In 1988 he moved to Paris, where he worked with some of the greatest African musicians, such as Mory Kanté, Salif Keïta and Mamadi Keïta, as well as with the dance companies Norma Claire, Georges Momboye, the ballets Kodia, Nimba and Kakendé. He was one of the first to teach balafon in Paris.

 

Sébastien Leborgne

Better known as Lucien 16S, Sébastien Leborgne is a rap artist, slammer, human-beatboxer and computer assisted music composer. He made his debut in 1992 with the rap group San Priote. He is accustomed to collaborations taking place outside his own artistic field, appearing in various projects with diverse influences, including neo-jazz, blues sounds and progressive rock, etc. His meeting with Giacomo Spica Capobianco in the early 2000s allowed him to understand the importance of teaching and transmitting urban music. He holds a Diplôme d’Etat in popular amplified music from the Cefedem AuRA. He has been involved in leading workshops initiated by the CRA.P association since 2008 and accepted Giacomo Spica Capobianco’s invitation to join the Orchestre National Urbain in 2016, the year it was founded.

crap-lyon.fr
 

Lukas Ligeti

Lukas Ligeti is an Austrian American composer and improvisor (drums and electronics). He combines in his music the influences of a great variety of musical languages, especially those of the European avant-garde, the African traditions, jazz, and the spirit of the New York experimental music scene. His creative experiences lead to innovations in the interaction in ensembles and to polymetric structures and polytempo. A lot of his works are rooted in his intensive study of African music. As a percussionist, he is in demand in the jazz and free improvisation domains, he worked for a long time with live electronic music and is also the initiator of numerous intercultural musical projects. Since 1994 he worked on a regular basis in diverse regions of Africa, this led him to a particular form of intercultural collaboration approach, namely the experimental intercultural collaboration. With colleagues from West Africa, he founded the ensembles Beta Foly (Ivory Coast, 1994-99) and Burkina Electric (Birkina Faso, since 2004) and he worked also in Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe, among others. He is currently professor of composition at the Brixelles Royal Conservatorium.

Lukas Ligeti
Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles
 

Oguri

Oguri, choreographer native of Japan. His inspiration to dance came after meeting Butoh founder Hijikata Tatsumi. He started training/performing in 1985 with famed dancer Min Tanaka’s company, Mai-Juku and participated in founding Body Weather Farme. He practiced traditional organic farming, experiencing the rhythms and cycles of this most human lifestyle. Oguri moved to Los Angeles in 1991 and joined Roxanne Steinberg sharing Body Weather Laboratory. For over 30 years, he has been teaching, creating and producing dance and multi-media works incorporating his own large-scale set/sculpture installations and his dramatic, often chiaroscuro lighting in formal theatre settings and site-specific venues worldwide. He has developed collaborative projects with musicians, sculptors, painters, and poets, using literature, daily life imagery and simple materials to transform space and time with dance. In 2011, Oguri formed ARCANE Collective with Morleigh Steinberg, touring full-productions and live concepts.

bodyweather.org
 

Emmanuelle Pépin

Emmanuelle Pépin, dancer, choreographer and educator. A long pathway as a performer in contemporary and African dance companies led her to instant composition and performance art with improvisation artists (particularly Barre Phillips) and visual artists. Associate artist in 7Pépinière artistic and educational development space with Pierre Vion, focusing specifically on instant composition, performance, perception senses and phenomena, in collaboration with philosophers, photographers, visual artists, architects, writers, sophrologists, and musicians. Emmanuelle Pépin performs on the scenes of contemporary art in France and many other countries around the world, weaving tight links between humans and the environment, particularly nature, but also in landmark sites, remarkable gardens, museums and galleries, ruins, and wide open spaces. Dance, music, poetry, and installations intersect here, with the great freedom offered by the art of improvisation. Emmanuelle Pépin, born in January 1968 in Brittany, lives in the South of France. She remains nomadic at heart and the world is her playground. She places the human being at the center of her artistic and educational approach. She deeply believes in the beauty that each person carries within, and in how body language can reveal the self being.

7Pépinière
 

Christine Quoiraud

Christine Quoiraud studied contemporary dance, art history, philosophy, and visual arts. In 1981, she began studying and practicing in Mon Tanaka’s Body Weather Laboratory. In 1985, she became a member of his company, Maï-Juku Dance Co, the farmers-dancers, at the Hakushu Body Weather Farm in Japan. In 1990 she came back to France to develop her practice and teaching around working on the body meteorology or “Body Weather Laboratory”. She developed her own creative work and set up the Marche et Danse (walking and dance project) thanks to a Villa Médicis hors les murs fellowship (1999). Various projects of long distance walking extended her investigative work on the relationship body/landscape both solo or in groups (Yugoslavia, California, Spain, Australia, Great Britain, Montenegro, Morocco, Mexico, France, etc.). She considers herself an improvisational performer with a strong connection to the environment. She has collaborated with numerous musicians, visual artists, poets, and scientists, including ethologists and botanists. Today, she contributes to the history of dance. She devotes herself to writing and archiving her work for the Centre National de la Danse in Pantin and presents her research to various audiences (Uqam, Books on the Move, CND, dance festivals, etc.).

See the article: « Se loger dans le « etc. » du XXe siècle. ‘Donner la palabre’. Entretiens sur l’improvisation empruntant les voies du Body Weather. » Centre National de la Danse
Médiathèque du Centre National de la Danse
 

Leonie Sens

Leonie Sens is a designer and visual artist based in Hamburg/ Germany. She has worked as a stage designer before she studied Design.
Her work extends over various disciplines of visual expression.
From textile design (she founded her own Label le.sens in 2008) to illustrations and digital paintings and into the field of photography.
In her own design language, she deals with nature from a non-anthropocentric perspective.

le-sens
 

Nicolas Sidoroff

Nicolas Sidoroff, musician>militant<researcher, member of PaaLabRes, teaches at the Cefedem Auvergne Rhône-Alpes. He will soon defend his doctoral thesis in the Education Sciences department at Paris 8 University, under the provisional title “Explorer des lisières d’activités.Vers une microsociologie des pratiques (musicales)” (Exploring edges (margins) of activities. Towards a micro-sociology of (musical) practices). Among other things, he is the webm@ster of the site…

Revue Agencements: cairn, éd. du commun
Cefedem AuRA
 

Giacomo Spica Capobianco

Giacomo Spica Capobianco is author, composer, artist singer, slammer, tchatcher, improviser, musician, urban instrument builder, educator, and self-taught. Founder of the Company GSC and of the Orchestre National Urbain (2015). After spending 16 years working in a factory as a metallurgy worker, and issued from a family of musicians from southern Italy, at Isola del Liri (a region between Rome and Naples), he decided to devote himself fully to music. He is also the artistic director of CRA.P (Carrefour of pluricultural artistic encounters), an art center specializing in urban and electronic music. He has a strong experience in bringing together classical music, jazz, traditional music, and popular amplified music. His discography is very extensive, and he participated to numerous residencies and concerts with the Orchestre National Urbain. He often performs solo or with various partners (Camel Zekri, Karine Hahn, Gilles Laval, etc.) in Europe and North Africa.

crap-lyon.fr
 

Guide de la Quatrième Edition

 

Accéder au Editorial de la quatrième édition

Accéder au Contributeurs – Contributrices de la quatrième édition 2025


English

Access to the English translation: Guide to the Fourth Edition 2025 Edition

Access to Editorial- English


 

Guide de la quatrième édition PaaLabRes,
« Rendre compte des pratiques »

Sommaire :

Page d’accueil
Contributions
Remerciements
Liste des contributeurs et contributrices de l’édition 2025, « Rendre compte des pratiques »
 


Page d’accueil

La photo initiale de la page d’accueil est un moellon prise par Yves Favier.

Les graphismes qui apparaissent par-dessus cette photo ont été réalisés par Leonie Sens.

Si on déplace le curseur sur la photo apparaissent 6 feuilles représentant des catégories donnant accès aux contributions :

  1. Al(t)er/Retour. Cette catégorie concerne les allers et retours d’artistes entre l’Afrique et le reste du monde. Elle contient pour l’instant trois contributions.
  2. InDisciplines – Flux. Les interrelations entre disciplines artistiques qui tendent dans les formes improvisées à être « indisciplinées ». Pour l’instant cette catégorie contient deux contributions qui abordent les relations entre la danse et l’environnement et entre la danse et la musique.
  3. Fabuler – EnQuête. La recherche artistique allant de la formalisation universitaire à des démarches plus informelles. Cette catégorie ne comporte pour l’instant qu’un seul article.
  4. Fabrique-à-dispositifs. Il y a trois articles dans cette catégorie qui porte sur l’élaboration de situations à partir d’un contexte particulier mettant les personnes qui y participent dans des démarches d’invention de leur pratique.
  5. BidOuille – Électro. Deux articles portent sur l’utilisation des technologies électroniques et numériques dans des pratiques artistiques.
  6. Trajets. Cette catégorie concerne des projets qui se déroulent dans des lieux plus ou moins éloignés et impliquent pour les personnes qui y participent des voyages permettant la réflexion avant, après ou entre les actions se déroulant sur les différents lieux. Les contributions de cette catégorie sont en projet.

Trois noms (Éditorial, Guide, Activités) apparaissent en bas à droite de l’écran. En cliquant dessus, ils donnent accès a) à l’éditorial de la quatrième édition et à la liste des contributeurs, b) au guide d’utilisation de cette édition et c) aux activités des membres du collectif PaaLabRes depuis 2021.

En faisant passer le curseur sur une des feuilles des 6 catégories fait pousser un bouquet de feuilles plus petites, certaines contenant les initiales des contributeurs. Pour avoir une idée plus précise de chaque contribution, il suffit d’amener le curseur sur une des feuilles avec des initiales, une bulle d’information apparaît. Vous pouvez ensuite cliquer dessus si vous voulez voir cette contribution.
 

Contributions

Al(t)er/Retour :

  1. DMK : « Interview de Djely Madi Kouyaté ». Interviews du musicien guinéen Djely Madi Kouyaté par Jean-Charles François et Nicolas Sidoroff en présence d’Olivier François, Paris (2022-2023). Parcours d’un griot, joueur de balafon, qui a grandi dans un village en Guinée, joué dans l’ensemble Kotéba en Côte d’Ivoire en tournant en Afrique et en Europe, puis s’est installé à Paris en participant à de nombreux groupes de musiques africaines.
  2. LL : Lukas Ligeti, « Instruments secrets, destinations secrètes », traduction d’un article publié en anglais dans Arcana II, Musicians on Music, (John Zorn ed. 2007). Récit très détaillé de sa pratique de la batterie et de la musique électronique en Afrique (Côte d’Ivoire, l’ensemble Beta Foly, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Burkina Faso) et de ses compositions pour ensembles de musique contemporaine (Amadinda Percussion Group, Budapest et London Sinfonietta).
  3. FK : Jean-Charles François, « Commentaires sur le livre de Famoudou Konaté, Mémoires d’un musicien africain, Ma vie – mon djembé – ma culture ». Famoudou Konaté est un joueur de djembé internationalement reconnu et qui a écrit ce livre (publié en français en 2022) en collaboration avec Thomas Ott, qui « a été professeur universitaire de pédagogie musicale à Berlin ».

 
InDisciplines – Flux :

  1. BW : « Rencontre autour de la ferme du Body Weather (la période 1985-90), Entretien avec Katerina Bakatsaki, Oguri et Christine Quoiraud (avec la participation de Jean-Charles François et Nicolas Sidoroff pour PaaLabRes) ». Récit de la création par Min Tanaka de la ferme au Japon et des rapports entre la danse et l’environnement, entre la danse et la musique dans le cadre du concept de « Body Weather », c’est-à-dire comme le temps météorologique, le corps qui change de manière continuelle. Pour les trois protagonistes, la rencontre avec Min Tanaka et la création de la ferme du Body Weather ont été des évènements majeurs pendant leur jeunesse, dont chacune et chacun se souvient à leur manière. Cet élément fondateur a donné lieu par la suite chez elles et lui à des parcours de vie différents, mais pourtant prolongeant avec une grande continuité la philosophie initiale de Tanaka.
  2. EP/LG : Emmanuelle Pépin et Lionel Garcin, « LE SON – l’écoute – LE GESTE dans l’improvisation », vidéo de la conférence/performance qui a eu lieu au Cefedem AuRA en janvier 2023. En addition, nous publions les textes d’Emmanuelle utilisés comme base lors de cette conférence, le texte effectivement prononcé pendant la performance, et la transcription des débats avec les étudiants et enseignants du Cefedem à l’issue de cette performance.

 
Fabuler – EnQuête :

  1. NS/JCF : Jean-Charles François et Nicolas Sidoroff, « Une situation de mise en pratique collective en vue d’ouvrir un débat significatif ». Atelier animé par les deux auteurs dans le cadre du séminaire-atelier sur les partitions graphiques « Partitions #3 “Donner-ordonner” » de l’Autre musique (Institut ACTE, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne), le 14 mars 2018 organisé par Frédéric Mathevet et Gérard Pelé. Trois journées d’études avaient été organisées à Paris dans le courant de l’année 2017-18. L’article contient la transcription des propos tenus pendant l’atelier, des extraits audio des improvisations collectives, et des commentaires par les deux auteurs.

 
Fabrique-à-dispositifs :

  1. KH : Karine Hahn « L’épisode du métronome », extrait de sa thèse de doctorat en sociologie « Les pratiques (ré)sonnantes du territoire de Dieulefit, Drôme : une autre manière de faire la musique » (2023). Une description des pratiques démocratiques de la fanfare Tapacymbal dans le cadre de l’école de musique du Caem à Dieulefit.
  2. CduC : « Le Conte du “Conte” », compte-rendu de la création du spectacle « Le Conte d’un futur commun » par Louis Clément (initiateur du projet), Delphine Descombin (conteuse), Yovan Girard (musique) et Maxime Hurdequint (dessins). Les textes sont le résultat de quatre interviews séparées de chaque artiste réalisé en 2023 par Nicolas Sidoroff et Jean-Charles François.
  3. GSC : « Création Collective Nomade », projet de l’Orchestre National Urbain (direction artistique Giacomo Spica Capobianco) dans le cadre de la Biennale Hors Norme 2023 au Grandes voisines, CNSMD de Lyon, Université Lyon II. Rencontres et médiations entre des jeunes réfugiés et des étudiants du conservatoire et de l’université autour de pratiques artistiques (musique, danse, peinture) mises en commun. Comptes-rendus de Joris Cintéro et Jean-Charles François, avec une vidéo de Giacomo Spica Capobianco et Sébastien Leborgne.

 
Bidouille – Électro :

  1. C/G : Rencontre avec Vincent Raphaël Carinola et Jean Geoffroy en février 2023 (avec Nicolas Sidoroff and Jean-Charles François pour PaaLabRes). La discussion a porté sur leur collaboration autour de deux pièces de Carinola : Toucher et Virtual Rhizome. La contribution est accompagné d’un article des deux mêmes auteurs traduit de l’anglais : « Espaces notationnels et œuvres interactives ».
  2. WB : Warren Burt, « Comment le passé a le don de vous rattraper, ou la démocratisation de l’informatique musicale, dix ans après ». Récit des transformations technologiques au cours d’une vie (de 1967 à aujourd’hui) consacrée à l’impertinence en musique et l’accès démocratique à la musique électroacoustique.

 

Remerciements

Nous souhaitons remercier les personnes qui ont aidé de manière bénévole à la production de cette nouvelle Édition « Rendre compte des pratiques ».

Réalisation de l’édition « Rendre compte des pratiques » : Jean-Charles François et Nicolas Sidoroff, avec l’aide de Anan Atoyama, Samuel Chagnard, Karine Hahn, Gilles Laval et Pascal Pariaud.

Traductions : Jean-Charles François avec l’aide de Deepl (version gratuite) et Jacques Moreau. Merci à Anne-Lise François, Emilie McBain et Alison Woolley pour leurs relectures des traductions en anglais. Merci à Guillaume Dussably et Monica Jordan pour leurs relectures des textes en français.

Transcriptions des interviews : Jean-Charles François avec l’aide de l’application Buzz. Merci à Christine Quoiraud pour son aide dans la transcription des interviews concernant la ferme du Body Weather. Merci à Samuel Chagnard pour la transcription des discussions des étudiants du Cefedem avec Emmanuelle Pépin et Lionel Garcin.

Vidéo : Merci à Ralph Marcon et Nicolas Sidoroff pour la réalisation de la captation vidéo de la conférence/performance d’Emmanuelle Pépin et Lionel Garcin. Cette vidéo a été éditée par Jean-Charles François, le son par Samuel Chagnard.

La page d’accueil : Remerciements à Leonie Sens pour la présentation graphique de la page d’accueil et à Yves Favier pour la photo du moellon.

 


Liste des contributeurs et contributrices de l’édition 2025,
« Rendre compte des pratiques »

Katerina Bakatsaki

Katerina Bakatsaki est une danseuse, chorégraphe et enseignante qui travaille à Amsterdam. Son travail est issu du Body Weather Laboratory, fondé par Min Tanaka et développé au sein de la Maï-juku Performance Company au Japon, à laquelle Katerina a été attachée de façon permanente de 1986 à 1993. Dès 1996, elle fonde le BWL Amsterdam avec Frank van de Ven, danseur, performer. Elle enseigne également à l’École pour le développement de la nouvelle danse de l’École de théâtre de l’École des arts d’Amsterdam.

 

Warren Burt

Warren Burt est un compositeur australien d’origine américaine. Il est aussi performeur, artiste vidéo, poète sonore, écrivain, constructeur d’instruments électroniques et acoustiques et d’autres choses encore. Il enseigne au Box Hill Institute, Melbourne. Il est connu pour composer dans une grande variété de nouveaux styles musicaux, allant de la musique acoustique à la musique électroacoustique, en passant par les installations d’art sonore et la musique textuelle.

warrenburt.com
 

Vincent-Raphaël Carinola

Vincent-Raphaël Carinola reçoit l’essentiel de sa formation musicale au CRR de Toulouse, puis au CNSMD de Lyon, auprès de Philippe Manoury et Denis Lorrain. Il écrit des œuvres pour des formations instrumentales avec ou sans dispositif électroacoustique, des œuvres acousmatiques, pour la scène, des installations, etc. Ses œuvres sont résultat d’une étroite complicité avec des amis musiciens et des ensembles très engagés. Docteur en Musicologie, il enseigne la composition associée aux nouvelles technologies à l’École Supérieure de Musique Bourgogne-Franche-Comté et à l’Université de Saint-Étienne. Il a récemment publié Composition, technologies et nouveaux agencements des catégories musicales aux Presses Universitaires de Saint-Étienne.

vrcarinola.com
 

Joris Cintéro

Joris Cintéro est docteur en Sciences de l’éducation et de la formation. Ses travaux s’intéressent aux processus de construction et de mise en œuvre de l’action publique territorialisée ainsi qu’à leurs effets sur le travail des enseignants dans les secteurs culturels et scolaires. Il est actuellement professeur de sciences de l’éducation au CNSMD de Lyon, chargé de cours à l’Université Lumière Lyon 2 et à l’Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne.

Université Lyon 2
 

Louis Clément

Louis Clément est diplômé de l’École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris Val de Seine. Il s’intéresse à la vidéo projection et au mapping depuis 2013 et crée « For L » avec le compositeur Dominique Clément, une scénographie vidéo audio réactive qui fera le tour de l’Europe. Il réfléchit à l’implication du public avec l’installation MicroMesoMacro et TheLiveDrawingProject. Depuis 2015, Louis réalise des œuvres géolocalisées où les spectateurs découvrent sur un territoire des œuvres plastiques et des interventions musicales dans des lieux inattendus. Il est également régisseur général pour plusieurs ensembles (Ensemble Aleph, Nomos) et régisseur vidéo pour des œuvres muséales à Lyon (Musée d’Art Contemporain, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Biennale d’Art Contemporain).

louisclement.fr
 

Delphine Descombin

Delphine Descombin est conteuse et trapéziste : Elle grandit en Saône-et-Loire au milieu des prés et des chênes immenses. À l’écoute des mutations du monde, elle privilégie les histoires ou- vertes, en écho à ce qui nous anime à un moment clé. Bousculant nos certitudes en explorant l’intime et la fragilité, ses contes interrogent notre manière d’être avec le vivant. Raconter, lui permet de proposer différents regards sur le monde. Autodidacte passionnée des arts vivants, elle alimente son travail tout au long de son parcours par ses rencontres, elle se forme à raconter avec des artistes dont elle aime le travail : Pépito Matéo, Myriam Pellicane, Christian Massas, Ludor Citrik, Marie-France Marbach. En 2017, elle créée la Compagnie Grim. On a pu la voir jouer sous une yourte en feutre, haute de 5m, espace insolite de rencontre qu’elle a inventé et fabriqué pour suspendre son trapèze, et proposer ses spectacles. Conteuse solo ou accompagnée de musicien, de circassien, elle raconte pour tous les publics. En 2017, elle créée la Compagnie Grim. On a pu la voir jouer sous une yourte en feutre, haute de 5m, espace insolite de rencontre qu’elle a inventé et fabriqué pour suspendre son trapèze, et proposer ses spectacles. Conteuse solo ou accompagnée de musicien, de circassien, elle raconte pour tous les publics.

 

Jean-Charles François

Percussionniste, compositeur, improvisateur, membre de PaaLabRes. Il a été dans les années 1960 musicien indépendant à Paris, puis de 1972 à 1990, professeur à l’Université de Californie San Diego. En 1990 il revient en France pour créer le Cefedem AuRA à Lyon. Il a joué de nombreuses années avec le groupe d’improvisation KIVA, l’Ensemble Aleph, puis plus récemment le trio d’improvisation PFL Traject. Depuis 2017 il participe à de nombreuses rencontres d’improvisation dans le cadre du CEPI (créé par le contrebassiste Barre Phillips).

paalabres.org
 

Olivier François

Percussionniste, initié aux percussions d’Afrique de l’Ouest avec Louis César Ewandé, il participe au projet « Percussions Ensemble » de Louis César Ewandé. Premières rencontres en 1986 avec Mamady Kéïta (Djembé Fola) et en 1989 avec Famoudou Konaté. Accompagne les chorégraphes Jams Sylla, Alphonse Soumah, Norma Claire, Georges Momboye lors de nombreux stages en France et à l’étranger. Depuis 1990 nombreux voyages en Afrique avec Souleyman Koly et les ballets Kotéba. En 2000 il s’installe en Guinée où il travaille avec bon nombre de musiciens et danseurs et participe à la création du projet « Percussions de Kouroussa ». Il vit actuellement en région parisienne.

 

Lionel Garcin

« La matière sonore, c’est un peu sa matière première, sa glaise, son bloc de marbre… Son instrument, c’est le saxophone. Un instrument à vent, soi¬ disant. Mais dont il sait exploiter toutes les facettes sonores. Certaines, parfois même assez inattendues… Le saxophone l’emmène le plus souvent sur le versant jazz de la musique ; les sons qu’il tire de ses instruments et ses rythmiques si particulières le situeraient plutôt du côté des recherches acoustiques chères à la musique contemporaine. » (J¬M Lecarpentier) Il joue depuis une quinzaine d’années avec Barre Phillips du trio (avec Émilie Lesbros) au grand ensemble (EMIR et EMIR danse). On peut aussi le retrouver actuellement dans les groupes NOP avec Frantz Loriot, Le Concert Perché avec Laurent Charles, Two Level Lunch avec Emmanuel Cremer, Domininic Lash et Alex Ward, et bientôt dans The bridge #12 avec Christian Pruvost, David Boykin, Nicole Mitchell et Christophe Rocher.

Lionel Garcin
 

Jean Geoffroy

Jean Geoffroy a tracé sa propre voie dans le monde des percussions. Timbalier solo de l’EnsembleOrchestral de Paris de 1985 à 2000, membre de la Fondation Menuhin, Jean Geoffroy est un artiste infatigable qui a participé en tant que soliste à plus de 35 CD et DVD. Dédicataire de très nombreuses pièces, il joue dans les plus prestigieux festivals de musique du monde, et donne des master classes et des conférences dans le monde entier depuis plus de 30 ans. Passionné par l’enseignement, professeur aux CNSMD de Lyon et Paris, depuis 2019 il est directeur du département de création au CNSMD de Lyon : l’Espace Transversal de Création. De 1995 à 2004, il travaille au département pédagogique de l’Irma, dont il est aussi membre du comité de lecture. Directeur artistique du Centre Eklekto à Genève de 2006 à 2013, directeur artistique des Percussions de Strasbourg de 2015à 2017. Jean Geoffroy est chef invité de l’Ensemble Mésostics. En 2017, avec Christophe Lebreton, ils co-réalisent en collaboration avec le Grame (centre national de création musicale) le Light Wall System, interface lumineuse de captation du geste. En 2019, cette collaboration s’est concrétisée avec la Création de LiSiLoG association dédiée à l’innovation artistique et à la transmission.

lisilog.com
 

Yovan Girard

Après des études de violon classique, Yovan Girard étudie le jazz au CRR de Paris et obtient son Diplôme en 2010. Il est Invité du trio Didier Lockwood et se produit aux côtés de la chanteuse Emel Mathlouti et du chanteur Bachard Mar Khalifé. En 2015, il intègre le Mco collectiv de Franck Tortiller. Depuis 2017 il est chanteur du groupe d’Ethio-jazz Kunta. Son intérêt pour différentes esthétiques et son attrait pour l’improvisation lui permettent des expériences diverses en tant que violoniste, compositeur mais également rappeur. Dans la musique du “Conte d’un futur Commun” qu’il a composée, ses boucles sonores pré-enregistrées sont modifiées en temps-réel, et augmentées par ses improvisations.

 

Karine Hahn

Karine Hahn est une harpiste, sociologue, responsable du département de pédagogie, formation à l’enseignement spécialisé de la musique au CNSMD de Lyon. En octobre 2023, elle a soutenu une thèse de doctorat en sociologie à l’École des Hautes Études en Science Sociale, portant sur « Les pratiques (ré)sonnantes du territoire de Dieulefit, Drôme, une autre manière de faire la musique : implications, engagements et théorisation par la fabrication ordinaire de musiques ». En tant que musicienne, Karine Hahn est impliquée dans différents collectifs (PaaLabRes, Inouï production, VMC – Giacomo Spica) s’attachant à relier pratique musicale et réflexivité, création et implication d’acteurs et d’actrices variées lors de résidences de création.

oicrm.org
 

Maxime Hurdequint

Après avoir complété sa formation par différentes pratiques au Danemark, Mexique puis Japon, Maxime Hurdequint a exercé comme architecte à Paris. En 2018 il a fondé l’agence MURA à Lyon. Parce que « les bâtiments prennent trop de temps pour être achevés », il est aussi illustrateur : « J’aime faire des dessins parce qu’il est beaucoup plus rapide d’en finir un ! »
« Le voyageur est une source continuelle de perplexités. Sa place est partout et nulle part. Il vit d’instants volés, de reflets, de menus présents, d’aubaines et de miettes. Voici ces miettes… » (Nicolas Bouvier, Chroniques japonaises) Ses dessins sont des instants gravés de ses moments passés à pied, en scooter, en barque, dans le bus, à regarder et à décrypter les paysages qu’il a observé tout au long de ses voyages.

artsper.com
 

Famoudou Konaté

Famoudou Konaté est le grand représentant de la tradition musicale Malinké de la Guinée. Pendant 25 ans il a été le premier soliste de djembé des Ballets Africains de la République de Guinée. Il est ensuite devenu musicien et enseignant indépendant et a fait découvrir sa musique, lors de concerts et d’ateliers, dans le monde entier.

editions-harmattan.fr
 

Djely Madi Kouyaté

Djely Madi Kouyaté est un musicien balafonniste guitariste, vivant à Paris, issu d’une famille de griots à Kamponi région de Boké en Guinée. Il intègre le Ballet Kotéba de Souleyman Koly, à Abidjan en Côte d’Ivoire, avec lequel il fait de nombreuses tournées en Afrique de l’Ouest et en Europe. En 1988 il s’installe à Paris où il travaille avec les plus grands musiciens Africains tel que Mory Kanté, Salif Keïta, Mamadi Keïta, avec les compagnies de danse Norma Claire, Georges Momboye et les ballets Kodia, Nimba, Kakendé. Il fut parmi les tout premiers à enseigner le balafon à Paris.

 

Sébastien Leborgne

Sébastien Leborgne est plus connu sous le nom de Lucien 16S, artiste rap, slam, human beat-box et compositeur en MAO. Fait ses débuts en 1992 avec le groupe de rap « LANPRYNT » puis rejoindra le groupe I.P.M (Impact Par les Mots) en 1997. Il est habitué aux collaborations hors de son champ artistique, il apparaît sur différents projets aux diverses influences, Néo Jazz, sonorités Blues et Rock Progressif, etc. Sa rencontre avec Giacomo Spica Capobianco, début des années 2000 va lui permettre de comprendre l’importance de la formation et de la transmission des musiques urbaines. Il est diplômé d’Etat en musiques actuelles amplifiées (Cefedem AuRA). Il intervient sur les ateliers initiés par l’association CRA.P à partir de 2008 et accepte l’invitation de Giacomo Spica Capobianco d’intégrer l’Orchestre National Urbain, en 2016, date de sa création.

crap-lyon.fr
 

Lukas Ligeti

Compositeur et improvisateur autrichien-américain, Lukas Ligeti combine dans sa musique des influences d’une grande variété de langages musicaux, notamment ceux de l’avant-garde européenne, des traditions africaines, du jazz et de l’esprit de la scène musicale expérimentale new-yorkaise. Ses expériences créatives ont conduit à des innovations dans l’interaction d’ensemble et des structures polymétriques et polytempo. Beaucoup de ses œuvres sont enracinées dans son étude intensive des musique africaines. Recherché comme percussionniste dans les domaines du jazz et de l’improvisation libre, Lukas Ligeti travaille depuis longtemps avec l’électronique live et est également l’initiateur de nombreux projets musicaux interculturels. Depuis 1994 il a travaillé régulièrement dans diverses régions d’Afrique, ce qui a conduit à une forme particulière d’approche de la collaboration transculturelle, la collaboration interculturelle expérimentale. Avec des collègues d’Afrique de l’Ouest, il a fondé les ensembles Beta Foly (Côte d’Ivoire, 1994-99) et Burkina Electric (Burkina Faso, depuis 2004) et a également travaillé en Côte d’Ivoire, Égypte, au Ghana, au Kenya, au Lesotho, au Mozambique, en Ouganda et au Zimbabwe, entre autres. Il est actuellement professeur de composition au Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles.

Lukas Ligeti
Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles
 

Oguri

Oguri, chorégraphe né au Japon. Son inspiration pour la danse est venue de sa rencontre avec Hijikata Tatsumi, fondateur du Butoh. En 1985 il a étudié et dansé avec Min Tanaka et participe à la création de la ferme du Body Weather. En tant que danseur, le lien entre le corps humain et la nature est pour lui fondamental. En 1991 il s’est installé à Los Angeles et a fondé avec Roxanne Steinberg le Body Weather Laboratory. Pendant plus de trente ans, Oguri a été enseignant, créateur et producteur de danse et d’œuvres multimédia, en incorporant ses propres installations constituées par de grandes sculptures scéniques et des éclairages dramatiques, souvent en clair-obscur, dans des théâtres et des environnements spécifiques à travers le monde entier. Il a collaboré avec des musiciens, des sculpteurs, des peintres et des poètes dans des projets mêlant la littérature, l’imagerie de la vie quotidienne et des matériaux simples pour transformer l’espace et le temps avec la danse. En 2011, Oguri a fondé le collectif ARCANE avec Morleigh Steinberg.

bodyweather.org
 

Emmanuelle Pépin

Emmanuelle Pépin, danseuse, chorégraphe et pédagogue. Un long chemin en tant qu’interprète auprès de compagnies de danse contemporaine et africaine l’a guidé jusqu’à la composition instantanée et l’art de la performance avec des artistes improvisateurs (en particulier Barre Phillips) et des plasticiens. Artiste associée de l’espace de développement artistique et pédagogique 7Pépinière avec Pierre Vion, orienté spécifiquement sur la composition instantanée, la performance, les sens et le phénomène de perception, en collaboration avec des philosophes, photographe, plasticiens, architectes, écrivains, sophrologues et musiciens. Emmanuelle Pépin intègre les scènes de l’art contemporain, en France et dans beaucoup de pays du monde et tisse un lien très étroit entre la place de l’homme et l’environnement, particulièrement la nature mais aussi des sites classés, des jardins remarquables, des musées et galeries, des ruines, des étendues. Danse, musique, poésie, installations se croisent ici, avec cette grande liberté qu’est l’art de l’improvisation. Emmanuelle Pépin, née en Janvier 1968 en Bretagne, vit dans le sud de la France. Elle reste nomade dans l’âme et le monde est son territoire de jeu. Elle place l’humain au centre de sa démarche artistique et pédagogique. Elle croit profondément en la beauté que peut porter chaque personne, et comment le langage du corps peut dévoiler l’être.

7Pépinière
 

Christine Quoiraud

Christine Quoiraud a étudié la danse contemporaine, l’histoire de l’art, la philosophie et les arts visuels. A partir de 1981, elle étudie et pratique le Body Weather Laboratory avec Min Tanaka. En 1985, elle devient membre de sa compagnie, Maï-Juku Dance Co, les danseurs fermiers, à la « Hakushu Body Weather Farm », au Japon. En 1990, elle revient en France pour y développer sa pratique et son enseignement autour du travail sur la météorologie du corps ou « Body Weather Laboratory ». Elle développe son propre travail de création et met en place les projets Marche et Danse grâce à la bourse Villa Médicis hors les murs (1999). Différents projets de marches longue distance prolongent son travail d’investigation sur la relation Corps/Paysage et sur les questions de l’improvisation, du rôle de l’art et de la position de l’artiste. Marches en solo ou en groupes (Yougoslavie, Californie, Espagne, Australie, Grande Bretagne, Monténégro, Maroc, Mexique, France, etc.). Elle se considère performer improvisatrice en lien fort avec l’environnement. Elle a collaboré avec de nombreux musiciens, artistes visuels, poètes et avec des scientifiques éthologues, botanistes. Aujourd’hui, elle contribue à l’histoire de la danse. Elle se consacre à l’écriture et à l’archivage de ses traces pour le Centre National de la Danse de Pantin et elle présente son travail de chercheuse auprès de divers publics (Uqam, Books on the Move, CND, festivals rando danse etc).

Voir l’article : Se loger dans le « etc. » du XXe siècle. “Donner la palabre”. Entretiens sur l’improvisation empruntant les voies du Body Weather (CN D, 2023).
Médiathèque du Centre National de la Danse
 

Leonie Sens

Leonie Sens est une designer-styliste et artiste visuelle basée à Hambourg, en Allemagne. Elle a travaillé comme scénographe avant d’étudier le design.
Son travail porte sur différentes disciplines des arts plastiques.
Du design textile (elle a fondé sa propre marque, le.sens, en 2008) à l’illustration et à la peinture numérique, en passant par la photographie.
Dans son propre langage stylistique, elle évoque la nature d’un point de vue qui n’est pas anthropocentrique.

le-sens
 

Nicolas Sidoroff

Nicolas Sidoroff, musicien>militant<chercheur, membre de PaaLabRes, formateur au Cefedem Auvergne Rhône-Alpes. Il va bientôt soutenir sa thèse de doctorat dans le département des Sciences de l’Éducation de l’Université Paris VIII sous le titre provisoire de « Explorer des lisières d’activités. Vers une microsociologie des pratiques (musicales) ». Entre autres, webm@ster du site…

Cefedem AuRA
en-corecherche et revue Agencements : cairn, éd. du commun

 

Giacomo Spica Capobianco

Giacomo Spica Capobianco est auteur compositeur, artiste chanteur, slameur, tchatcheur, improvisateur, musicien, facteur d’instruments urbains, pédagogue, et autodidacte. Fondateur de la Compagnie GSC et de l’Orchestre National Urbain (2015). Après 16 ans passé à l’usine, en tant qu’ouvrier en métallurgie, et baigné dans un univers familial de musiciens, issus du sud de l’Italie, à Isola del Liri (région entre Rome et Naples), il décide de se consacrer pleinement à la musique. Parallèlement, il dirige l’association CRA.P (Carrefour des rencontres artistiques pluriculturelles), centre d’art spécialisé en musiques urbaines et électroniques. Il a une forte expérience dans les rencontres entre musiques classiques, jazz, musiques traditionnelles et musiques actuelles amplifiées. Il a une discographie très fournie et participe à de nombreuses résidences et concerts avec l’Orchestre National Urbain. Il joue souvent en solo ou avec différents partenaires (Camel Zekri, Karine Hahn, Gilles Laval, etc.) en Europe et Afrique du Nord.

crap-lyon.fr
 

Fourth Edition Editorial (English)

 


Access to Guide to the Fourth Edition 2025 Edition and List of Contributors to the Fourth Edition

Access to the original French text of the Editorial 2025


 

Éditorial 2025
Artistic Research: Reports on Practices

Fourth Edition – PaaLabRes

Summary :

Introduction
To Document Practices and Informal Research
Practices
Report, Inquiry, Research
The contributions
PaaLabRes Fourth Edition, Future Contributions
 


Introduction

PaaLabRes (Pratiques Artistiques en Actes, LAboratoire de REchercheS) [Artistic Practices in Acts, Research Laboratory] is a collective of artists, in existence in Lyon since 2011, which attempts to define the outlines of research carried out by the practitioners themselves concerning artistic expressions that do not result in definitive art works.

PaaLabRes aims to bring together, through action, reflection and research, diverse practices that cannot be closely identified with the frozen forms of patrimonial heritage, nor in those imposed by cultural industries. These practices often involve collective creation, improvisation, collaboration between artistic domains, but without creating an identity that excludes other interactive forms of production. They tend to call into question the notion of autonomy of art in relation to society, and they are grounded in everyday life, and in contexts that mix art with sociology, politics, philosophy and the logic of transmission and education. As a result, these practices remain unstable and ever-changing, they are truly nomadic and transversal.

 

To Document Practices and Informal Research

The fourth edition of the paalabres.org website is linked to two concerns. On the one hand, there is the question of how to document the profusion of practices that most often take place anonymously. On the other hand, we attempt to show that within these practices, silent research approaches are at work, often unbeknownst to the people involved. Artistic research, thought of as directly linked to the processes of elaboration of practices, to the definition of projects, to interactions between people participating in them and eventually to particular modes of documentation in use (see the stations « Débat » et « Artistic Turn » in the first edition of paalabres.org).

The extraordinary diversity of the practices calls into question the notion of universalism and strongly challenges the hegemony of certain practices. Such diversity creates the necessity to include within the production mechanisms of elaboration that are related to bricolage, experimentation, and research. It is no longer simply a question of the conception of materials at the heart of artistic acts, but of including a more global approach concerning the interactions between individuals, the methods being considered, the different ways and contents of transmission and learning, the relationship with institutions, etc. To be able to find one’s way through the maze of the ecology of practices, of this proliferation of often antagonistic activities, there is a need to develop specific reflective tools. First, it is necessary to describe the practices in all their aspects and to question them in order to bring out their distinctive problematics. An inventory seems necessary in the form of narratives describing in detail what happens during a given project, in the documentation of practices using various media and in the formalization of concepts inherent to practical acts in the given context, notably concerning the unstable relations between intentions, daily reality, the final realization of productions and their public dissemination.

Artists often do not have the time or show little interest in narrating the details of their practice, in documenting processes for critical reflection. Often the artists wish that the attention be focused only on their finished productions and not on the behind the scenes of their elaboration. The explanations are considered too academic and not doing justice to the uniqueness of artistic approaches, or it is considered that art should keep its autonomy and
remain detached from the prosaic world.

Behind-the-scenes of research is largely ignored in the content of its publications (articles, books, conference presentations, etc.). The presentation of results takes precedence over the trial and error that preceded them. Yet research is full of starting up processes, unstable elaborations, and provisional documents. For example, the journal Agencements, Recherches et pratiques sociales en expérimentation has a section called « coulisse(s) » (behind-the-scenes) designed to “provide readers with major research writing, which remains confined in the workshop area where each one works or in the backstage of research” [Bodineau&co, 2018, p.9].

Concerning artistic practices, one of the risks is to leave the exclusivity of the explanations to the external viewpoints. In order to overcome the obstacles encountered by the protagonists of the practices, PaaLabRes proposes collective processes to finalize the contributions by putting in interrelation diverse skills. Thus, the narration of an artistic project can be clarified in an interview, in particular to help identify the points left obscure; oral expression is in this case easier but implies intelligent transcription skills. Documentation methods are often highly technical in relation to the various media and require collaboration. In this context, technical skills must be extended beyond their specialization and definitely include the ability to understand the issues at hand as perceived by those directly involved in the development of practices.

Critical analysis of practices is generally considered to be expressed in a written text, informed by references to previously published works on relevant topics. In the case of artistic research, this requirement is not necessarily what best suits the subversive character of certain artistic approaches. But the invention of textual or other technological devices appropriate to the spirit of an artistic project still seems to be insufficiently explored and remains a delicate proposition. How to consider handling both the concepts in all their complexity and their presentation remaining faithful to the intended artistic approach? How to expose at the same time the aesthetic points of view and to put them in question?

Narration, documentation and questioning of practices are by nature multifaceted: they involve events (performances, public presentations, workshops, conferences, etc.), multiple media (written texts, scores, graphics, videos, audio recordings, images, words), and numerous mediations that are constantly part of complex interaction processes.

The use of the term “artistic research” in the context of the fourth edition should therefore not be limited to what is precisely formalized in higher education and research institutions. It should be remembered that many artistic practices may contain phases of experimentation and processes that can be described as “informal research”. The project of the PaaLabRes collective is to put into relation the antagonisms that historically exist between artistic practices and university research on the one hand, and between artistic practices and the sector in charge of teaching these practices on the other. Moreover, the comparison of artistic practices with practices in use in fields that have special resonances with the arts (such as sociology, anthropology, linguistics…) can be very useful for the elaboration of a more general reflection on today’s cultural contexts. Therefore, the call for contributions for the fourth edition remains very broad and concerns the realms of university research, arts education, and the diversity of practices in the field of the arts and other related disciplines.

The objective of the fourth edition is to develop a database of practices, more or less ephemeral, which constitute the horizon of today’s culture. The aim is not to propose models that can be developed into methods with guaranteed standardized results, but rather to have access to references from which one can draw inspiration and compare procedures. For this reason, the fourth edition is not limited in time, but will remain open until the moment when it seems that there is too much information. Anybody can at any time propose a contribution to this fourth edition.

 

Practices

The acts of practice are inscribed in time, one after the other, without giving the possibility of a panoptic view at the moment of their accomplishment. While doing, to reflect on all the elements at play is difficult, and it is only in retrospect that actions can be evaluated. Decisions during practice are rapidly made or even in an immediate manner, they can at any time result in changing direction, but without taking the time to really measure the consequences [See Bourdieu, 1980].

In the language succession, the meaning of a word can be changed by the succession of other grammatical elements, but at the time it is spoken, it carries a meaning perceived unilaterally. It can also offer openings towards the multitude of meanings it could produce. The same phenomenon tends to be manifested in the act of doing something. This act may change meaning according to acts that will follow, but at the time of doing, the individual who accomplishes it can only concentrate on what makes sense at this precise moment in this particular act.

This leads to the question of how to approach practices in the field of research? The temporal nature of practices means that we need to seriously consider processes into which the actions in progress evolve as they confront contexts. Nicolas Sidoroff [2024] defines practices as follows:

Procedures in a context.

With institutional dimensions.

And that lead beyond relationships between individuals.

Institutional dimensions are part of the context, but it’s often necessary to make them explicit so as to not forget and to be able to signify what they intersect with. This is one of the five dimensions proposed by Jacques Ardoino [1999] to describe human interactions as accurately as possible.[1] This dimension is worked on by so-called “institutional” approaches (psychotherapy, pedagogy, institutional analysis). This dimension is multifaceted, it brings together values, norms, social beliefs, ideological and cultural models, the histories in which we are all enmeshed, the imaginary, ghosts (absent persons but who have influences on the activity in process), and so on. Moreover, practices go beyond

social relationships between individuals alone to play a part in transforming social relations (according to Danièle Kergoat). Practices develop in a reciprocal movement. They are driven by a subject who is a “collective producer of meaning and actor of his or her own history” [Daniel Kergoat, 2009, p. 114], and they enable at the same time such subject to become collective producer and actor. [Nicolas Sidoroff, 2024, p. 156]

And finally, in the framework of this PaaLabRes edition, to consider practices as procedures in context and as succession of acts, leads to the possibility of narrating them. Practices can be recounted: this is what happened, or rather, better still, what somebody did,[2] in the present tense of the action, to be as close to it as possible. Someone does, we do, I do. Then, writing in the broadest sense of the term, what we call “documenting”, can take place, and with it, research on artistic fabrications and constructs.

The actions in progress implied in the active verb of “musicking” are univocal yet multiple acts [see Christopher Small, 1998]: they unfold in time, they last, they are not isolated, and they must constantly confront contexts that change as quickly as the weather. At the time of making a decision to carry an act, thinking is immediate. Everything is determined both by the actors’ past (habits, acquired knowledge) and by the situation to be faced (in the presence of other people and particular environments). The act can then be frozen in a conventional stage, if you don’t have the means to break away from the obsession with doing things right. But the time that follows the decision can also be viewed as a pathway to follow (to wander) in which unforeseen events may emerge opening up new options: the notions of trial and error, tinkering, experimentation and research then assume their full meaning.

Actions in progress are situated [Haraway, 2007], but they are also multiple, giving rise to a multitude of often contradictory injunctions. As a result, they are always inscribed at the edges, fringes or margins, placed in between “nuclei” that Nicolas Sidoroff defines in the context of his own practices as “performance, creation, mediation-teaching-learning, research, administration, and technique-instrument building.” (See Lisières, 3rd Edition PaaLabRes). Each act is situated with a different intensity in each of these nuclei that make edges exist and living in such ecosystems. Potentially, each act is largely within a single nucleus, but is also in interaction with all the others.

In Fernand Oury and Françoise Thébaudin’s book Pédagogie institutionnelle, Mise en place et pratique des institutions dans la classe [1995], interesting examples of “monographies” can be found, accounts of events inscribed in the framework of their pedagogy. Grounded with transcripts of spoken words made by young pupils and placed in context, the analysis is never done by a single person at the height of his or her expertise, but by several members of a team. Discussions are therefore never peremptory, reflecting uncertainties, ambivalences and complexities. Scientific-based books or notions, notably drawn from psychoanalysis, are then referred to, so as to enrich the debate and help understanding, but they are never considered as absolute truth, but they are just juxtaposed as elements among others in the collective analysis of complex and singular events. The pupils’ spoken words are in this manner always put to the fore.

 

Report, Inquiry, Research

Artists associated in particular with ephemeral forms face difficulty accepting the principle of documenting their production. For example, in the world of improvisation, the publication of a recording seems completely at odds with the notion of a situated act, performed in the present and never to be repeated in this form.[3] The documentation of an event seems to imply that it should serve as an exemplary model for subsequent events. Modeling is viewed as susceptible to creating the conditions of servile conformity to the established order in the immutable repetition of the same things. The diversification of the objects of documentation (observation accounts, discussions, consulting archives, reports on neighboring experiences, related texts, videos, recordings, etc.) tends to cause the idea of model to disappear in favor of that of inquiry. It gathers a whole ensemble of materials[4] that may not seem interesting at first sight, but that are essential in defining the context in which the action takes place.

In the call for contributions, we had considered exploring different modes of presenting research contents to the public, whether artistic or linked to other academic fields, whether informal or as part of university-style formalization. These different ways of reporting and documenting the elaboration of a practice to honor the processes of inquiry and research that often remain implicit, are not easy to invent.

The ways of reporting are also difficult to collect. In the music world, the almost magical phrase “we do it this way” is often pronounced. But without an instrument at hand, how to explain this manner of “doing it like that”? Recording and transcribing are our usual tools of inquiry. Our meetings and interviews usually take place in life settings (houses, apartments, cafes, videoconferences, etc.) where the conditions are not optimal, since there is a lot of interfering noises that come to perturb the understanding of recordings during transcription.

Experimenting with different means of presenting research as an alternative to the sole “thesis” presented on a text written according to the current rules set up by higher education institutions remains a very important objective for us. The aim is to present objects that encapsulate the essential artistic and conceptual contents of a given practice, without revealing what specialists consider as relevant detail. We can envisage objects capable of being apprehended by an audience and giving them the desire to visit further the content of a narration, its analysis, and its various accompanying documents. Such objects can be for example a lecture/performance, a mix-media work, a collage, an audio file, an animated text, etc.

 

The Contributions

The edition is organized in five categories:

  1. Otherwards-Return.. Three articles on Africa and the back-and-forth between this continent and the rest of the world.
  2. InDiscipline – Flux. Two contributions deal with the interrelationships between artistic disciplines, which tend to be “undisciplined” in improvised forms. More specifically they address the relationships between dance and the environment, and between dance and music.
  3. Fabulate – InQuest. This category covers research concerns ranging from academic formalization to more informal approaches. For the time being, it contains only one article.
  4. Context – FabBrick. Three articles in this category deal with the invention of “dispositifs”, i.e. situations elaborated from a particular context and involving the people who take part in them in creative ways linked to their practice.
  5. Electro – Tinkering. Two articles deal with the use of electronic and digital technologies in artistic practices.

A final category, which for the time being contains no contributions, Trajects, will deal with projects that take place in several more or less remote locations and imply that the participants travel, enabling reflection before, after or between the actions taking place in the various locations.

Here, in no particular order, is the presentation of the first ten contributions:

Emmanuelle Pépin and Lionel Garcin presented a lecture/performance on the relationships between dance and music. The performance was based on a dialogue between a dancer and a musician improvising together, exploring and demonstrating dance/music relationships in acts. The actions relating the dancer and the musician during the performance were not precisely predetermined: it was a real improvisation, yet one in a long series of improvisation mixing dance and music by both artists (not exclusively in the format of this particular duo), over a very long period of time. At certain points of the performance, Emmanuelle read aloud extracts from a text she had prepared ahead of time, choosing these extracts at random in the spirit of the moment. She also improvised spoken words inspired by her text while dancing in space. Lionel, meanwhile, continued to improvise sounds while moving in space, taking care not to cover the enunciated text. The text itself was situated in an “ecotone” (or edge) intertwining the presentation of the elements in play and the description of physical, bodily and acoustic phenomena, all this unified by poetical formulations. The principal interest of this kind of performance is that the act of “saying” is completely inserted in the midst of what is danced and musicked, but also that the “saying” in progress is directly put in practice in the dance and music performed (without, however, there being a direct relationship between words, sounds and movements as a form of pleonasm). In a single movement, the explanatory text in its poetic form, and the unfolding of the dance and music materials (and their theatricalization) form a unified whole, without avoiding the presentation of what constitutes its complexity.

The three contributions concerning the back-and- forth journeys between Africa and the rest of the world, that is the interview of Djely Madi Kouyaté, the commentaries on Famoudou Konaté‘s book, and the article by Lukas Ligeti describe long life journeys full of ambivalent events. All three are personalities who grew up in traditional environments – Guinean villages for Djely Madi Kouyaté and Famoudou Konaté, and the European intellectual elite for Lukas Ligeti (who is the son of the famous composer) – and who set off on “adventure” towards the rest of Africa, and then the rest of the world for the first two, and to several African countries for the latter. In all three cases, the journeys brought out contradictions due to culture shock.

Djely Madi Kouyaté, after growing up in the tradition of a Guinean village, when he joined the group Kotéba in Ivory Coast, had to face a process of bringing together practices originating from several African countries and the development of procedures linked to spectacle and technologies influenced in part by Western culture. The group toured Europe extensively, which eventually led Djely Madi to settle in Paris, where he had to interact in greater depth with its ambient culture. This raised the question for him of how to retain the richness of his own tradition despite the few adjustments he had to accept.

The life story of Famoudou Konaté, is very similar: he is selected in his village to be part of the Ballets Africains, which brings together the best musicians and dancers from independent Guinee. This ensemble tours around the world several times and allows him to be recognized as an international djembe virtuoso. He then became an independent musician and started also to be involved in teaching the fundamental basis of his tradition in Africa and Europe, to ensure its survival in a world of globalized culture influenced by electronic media.

In Lukas Ligeti‘s case, he came to Africa with his own representations linked to ethnomusicological studies and composing pieces influenced by African music. Through contact with African cultural realities, he had to adapt his practice as a percussionist, composer and electronic music practitioner to African contexts that blend traditional practices to the input of various technologies linked to electricity. Then in return, this raised the question of how all these elements can be taken up in the context of Western experimental music.

Another approach to documentation was chosen in the case of the “Tale of the ‘Tale’”,, as a result of a series of four separate interviews to the four protagonists of the immersive performance “Le Conte d’un future commun” (The Tale of a Common Future), Louis Clément, Delphine Descombin, Yovan Girard and Maxime Hurdequint. This collaborative project was based on ecological issues linked to the future of the planet, with the particularity of regrouping personalities already extremely close to each other in terms of family ties, friendships, belonging to the same networks or geographical proximity. But the four parallel accounts of the performance’s lengthy production process highlighted differences of perception of how things actually happened. Each of them had built an affabulation of the role and position of the others, and in their narratives staged fictitious conversations to describe the elements of discussions and interaction required to bring the piece to life. These differences were not the expression of disagreements concerning the project itself in artistic terms or political content, but rather subtle nuances of sensibility. In particular, the account of Delphine, the storyteller, often took the form of a series of “tales” during the interview, not in the sense of inventing fictional situations, but rather in the use of a certain narrative style to convey the information she wished to give us. Therefore, on the part of the PaaLabRes editorial team, the idea came to reorganize the different interview transcription texts of interviews in the form of dialogues in what could resemble a tale describing the fable of the “Tale”.

The same subtilities of nuances can be found in the account of dancer Min Tanaka’s creation of the Body Weather Farm in Japan, by three dancers – Katerina Bakatsaki, Oguri and Christine Quoiraud – who participated to this project during the period 1985-90. Two videoconference sessions took place, separated by a time span of nine months, this time conducted jointly with everyone present. Both encounters were in English, with Nicolas Sidoroff and Jean-Charles François present for PaalabRes. None of the people present spoke English as their native language and all expressed themselves with strong foreign accents (a Greek women living in Amsterdam, a Japanese man living in Los Angeles, and three French people living in France). Hence difficulty in the editorial realization to access a clear and precise meaning during the transcript of the audio files. Additionally, remembering the exact circumstances of events that took place a long time ago was not an easy task, and each artist’s narrative reflected three different ways of looking at this fundamental experience in their life right up to the present time. For this reason, we felt it necessary to preserve as far as possible the diversity of the narrative styles used by the three protagonists. What’s more, the views that the two “paalabrians” musicians had on things were somewhat divergent than one of the three dance artists: the meaning of the same terms in dance and music is not of the same nature, and the perception of the relationship between dance and music can vary a lot depending on the field one belongs. The total ignorance of the two musicians concerning the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Body Weather farm, led to some interesting debates on the presence or absence of “commons” in Min Tanaka’s group at the farm, on his determination never to fix things in definitive forms, and above all on the idea of not creating situations where a power exercised by anyone would be imposed itself on the whole community. It is the absence of obligation, nevertheless combined with the necessity of absolute engagement at all times, with whatever actions were undertaken, which seemed to have been the main force at work behind the Body Weather idea.

Warren Burt, who describes himself as a composer, performer, instrument builder, sound poet, video artist, multimedia artist, writer (etc.), and above all as an “irrelevant musician”, traces the recent history of the fantastic evolution of sound technologies, showing how they have influenced throughout his life his own aesthetics and political positions, in the realization of very precise actions. His militantism for an immediate use of the least expensive, most democratic tools made available by technology never changed: the use of the most ingenious, yet simplest tinkering, aiming at the richest possible aesthetics, with the cheapest utilizations possible in terms of money. Low-cost democratic access, impossible during the 1970s except for a privileged few working or studying in collective studios housed in big-budget institutions, is now becoming a reality for a large part of the world population, thanks to personal portable computers. But ironically, this access that was initially considered to be necessarily experimental and alternative, now that everybody has the ability to manipulate sound (and other objects) at will, is in grave danger of becoming nothing more than a generalized conformism generated by manipulative media.

The recent evolution of new sound technologies has led to the development of interface tools (theremin, smartphones) manipulated by performing musicians controlling machines and distributing sounds in space. The sonorities, determined by the composer and stored in a particular electronic system, are no longer directly produced by the instrumentalists who then become collaborators of the composer in determining what will actually happen during a performance. This new situation changes the conditions of the relationship between those who elaborate particular systems, those who build the appropriate technological tools to realize them, and those who implement them on stage in real time. These aspects of collaboration were the subject of the encounters with Vincent-Raphaël Carinola and Jean Geoffroy. In retrospect, it would have been necessary to include in the interview a third person responsible for the technological construction of the new lutheries (Christophe Lebreton). In the future, there is the possibility to make up for the absence of this third facet of the collaborative musical conception.

In the minds of these two musicians, Jean and Vincent, the boundaries between creation and interpretation have become porous, but at the same time they don’t call in question the fundamental separation between composer and performer that is characteristic of Western music. In this manner, they are part of a historic continuity within this style of music, because collaborations between composer and performer, and also with the instrument builder, have often taken place in the past, despite the gradual specialization of roles in their professional function. As with the music based on processes of the second part of the twentieth century, the composer doesn’t completely determine the events that will occur on stage but proposes a regulated sound architecture into which the performer must creatively enter. The instrumentalist becomes a sculptor of sound matter in real time, a stage director of the system’s data, which creates the conditions for a new virtuosity and thus stands out from the use of interfaces (as in certain installations or videogames) by the general public.

The effective encounters of differences (cultural, artistic, economical, of geographical origin, of research content, etc.) in shared practical situations is of great importance in relation to today’s context. In all cases, whether in the encounter of different artistic domains, or of different aesthetics, or of different community groups, or again that linked to the reception of refugees, it’s necessary to invent a practical ground for mediation and not simply juxtapose or superimpose the diversity of expressions. In this manner, you may avoid the domination of one human group over another in a dual movement of respect for different expressions and of development of a common practice between groups based on principles of democratic equality.

For over thirty years, Giacomo Spica Capobianco developed actions to give young people of underprivileged neighborhoods access to musical practices in accordance with their aspirations, by enabling them to invent their own forms of expression. He has always been concerned with connecting these youths with practices of other spheres of society. He organized encounters between groups of very different styles and developed with the members of the Orchestre National Urbain improvisation situations that made possible for groups to work on common materials outside their principal cultural references. The document included in this edition, Collective Nomadic Creation, is the result of an action conducted by the Orchestre National Urbain, which took place during the Autumn 2023 bringing together young refugees from various shelter centers with the students of the CNSMDL (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon), and of the Lyon II University. It presents texts by two of the project’s observers, Joris Cintéro et Jean-Charles François and a video realized by Giacomo Spica Capobianco and Sébastien Leborgne featuring a series of interviews with various participants and extracts of music and dance actions that took place during this project.

We publish an extract from Karine Hahn‘s doctoral thesis on “Les pratiques (ré)sonnantes du territoire de Dieulefit, Drôme : une autre manière de faire de la musique.” [The (re)sonating practices of Dieulefit territory, Drôme: another way to make music.] The title of this extract is “The Metronome Episode”, in which she relates the unexpected apparition of a metronome at a rehearsal of a democratic fanfare. The metronome-object, brought in by one of the group members, drastically bursts into the scene of the practice of an ensemble that usually vehemently resists any external authoritarian imposition. Karine Hahn’s analysis of this event takes place in a context where she made the deliberate choice to be part of this “Tapacymbal” fanfare, both to experience a practice from the inside in an epidermic manner, and to be able to observe it from a more detached viewpoint. She breaks away from an oft-stated rule that, to do research, you should not get involved in the objects you are studying. If she is part of the group to be observed, she is in danger through this experience to be emotionally in solidarity with the problems they encounter, and if she remains outside, she is in danger of not really understanding what is at stake. Often researchers external to their subject matter are unable to put forward the questions that are relevant to the group they’re observing, and when they attempt to reveal the implicit structures at work, they tend to tap outside the cymbals. Karine Hahn’s position in the group precludes any overhanging approach, her position of “learned” musician and scholar issued from the conservatories aiming at professional life in music is completely put in question by a situation that awakens her own negative attitudes towards the oppressive use of the metronome. The experience of the group facing this tool, which she has to endure, results in completely challenging her representations and changes the nature of her expert eyes. This doesn’t modify her knowledge but puts it in perspective in the light of a context. It’s in the sense of this tension between the inside and the outside of a given practice that the militantism of the PaaLabRes collective concerning “informal” artistic research is situated: only actual experience can produce a knowledge of the issues at stake, and then you have to be capable of detaching yourself from it in order to develop reflexivity.

To conclude this round-table survey of the first ten contributions to the fourth edition, the two main editors, Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff, present L’Autre Musique, an account of a workshop in which the situations of collective artistic production are susceptible to provoke meaningful discussion on the subject of a particular issue, in this case graphic scores and their actual implementation in performance. The experimental hypothesis was as follows: the juxtapositions and superimpositions of research accounts (as is so often the case in the usual formatting of international conferences) fail to achieve meaningful debates. They remain in the realm of information rather than producing in-depth exchanges of ideas, because no common practice takes place, creating a context where the same objects are discussed with full knowledge of the facts. It’s from a common experience that different sensibilities to actions that are effectively lived together can emerge, whereas passive listening of academic presentations tends only to produce polite reactions (or definitive rejections).

Therefore, the paalabres.org fourth edition makes a modest contribution to exploring the various possible ways of reporting on practices, trying to find editorial solutions that are respectful of artistic content. The often-elusive ideal is to find ways to “put into practice” reporting and documentation in processes identical to those of action and research, to find a happy coincidence between artistic objects, narratives of practices and critical reflection.

 

PaaLabRes Fourth Edition, Future Contributions

Several contributions are currently under development:

  • Pom Bouvier, back-and-forth Lyon – St Julien Molin-Molette between listening to environments and improvisations that immediately follow.
     
  • György Kurtag Jr, work on live computer music production with young children.
     
  • Yves Favier, Jean-Charles François, György Kurtag and Emmanuelle Pépin, “CEPI Trajects” a series of encounters around dance/music/sceno-active improvisation in Valcivières, Bordeaux, Lyon, Esino, Nice, Budapest and Cabasse. Journeys between places, a special time for reflection.
     
  • Reinhard Gagel, “OHO! Offhandopera – Impromptu Music Theatre”. How to improvise an opera.
     
  • Karine Hahn, continuation of the publication of excerpts of her thesis “(Re)sonating Practices on the Dieulefit (Drôme) Territory: Another Way of Making Music”.

These contributions will be published as soon as possible.
 
Other contributions are being considered for the future:

  • Anan Atoyama, her work on the occupation of stage space and issues of climate migration.
     
  • Jean-François Charles and Nicolas Sidoroff, on live musical accompaniment for silent films.
     
  • Marina Cyrino and Mathias Koole, lectures/performances on the flute and guitar in improvised music.
     
  • Kristin Guttenberg, on her practice of dance/music improvisation in unexpected spaces.
     
  • Anan Atoyama, Vlatko Kučan and Jean-Charles François on the musician’s and dancer’s body in space.
     
  • Gilles Laval on the European journeys of his project “100 guitars” and the idea of a nomadic university.
     
  • Noémi Lefebvre, collective readings aloud from her book Parle.
     
  • Mary Oliver on her experiences of musician improviser with dance artists.
     
  • Pascal Pariaud on working with children from a primary school near Lyon on producing sounds with various means.
     
  • Nicolas Sidoroff on fanfares in political demonstrations.
     
  • Tam Thi Pham, Vietnamese musician and dan-bau player, on her practice of traditional music from Vietnam and experimental improvisation.
     
The PaaLabRes Collective:
Anan Atoyama, Samuel Chagnard, Jean-Charles François, Laurent Grappe, Karine Hahn,
Gilles Laval, Noémi Lefebvre, Pascal Pariaud, Nicolas Sidoroff, Gérald Venturi.

 


Références bibliographiques

ARDOINO, Jacques. (1999). Éducation et politique. Paris : Anthropos Economica, coll. Éducation (2e éd.).

BECKER, Howard S. (2004). Écrire les sciences sociales, commencer et terminer son article, sa thèse ou son livre. Paris : Economica, coll. Méthodes des sciences sociales (éd. orig. Writing for Social Scientists. How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article, University of Chicago Press, 1986, trad. Patricia Fogarty et Alain Guillemin).

BOURDIEU, Pierre. (1980). Le sens pratique, Paris, Éditions de Minuit.

BODINEAU, Martine & co. (2018). « Édito », dans Agencements, Recherches et pratiques sociales en expérimentation, n°1, p. 7-9. doi.org

HARAWAY, Donna J. (2007). « Savoirs situés : la question de la science dans le féminisme et le privilège de la perspective partielle », dans Manifeste cyborg et autres essais : sciences, fictions, féminismes, édité par Laurence Allard, Delphine Gardey, et Nathalie Magnan. Paris : Exils Éditeur, coll. Essais, p. 107-142 (trad. par Denis Petit et Nathalie Magnan, éd. orig. Feminist Studies, 14, 1988).
HARAWAY, Donna J. (1988). « Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective », in Feminist Studies 14(3), p. 575‑99.

KERGOAT, Danièle. (2009). « Dynamique et consubstantialité des rapports sociaux », dans DORLIN, Elsa, Sexe, race, classe : pour une épistémologie de la domination, Paris : PUF, coll. Actuel Marx confrontation, p. 111-125.

OURY, Fernand & THÉBAUDIN, Françoise. (1995). Pédagogie institutionnelle, Mise en place et pratique des institutions dans la classe. Vigneux : Éd. Matrice.

SIDOROFF, Nicolas. (2024). « La recherche n’existe pas, c’est une pratique ! » Agencements, Recherches et pratiques sociales en expérimentation, n°10, p153-57. doi.org
 


1. The other dimensions are: individual, interindividual, groupal and organizational.

2. Howard Becker gave this advice concerning writing: [Consider] “who is responsible of the actions your sentence describes” [2004 (1986), p. 13].

3. This position towards the publication of improvisation recordings outside the participants doesn’t prevent the use of sound recordings as a working tool in various re-listening situations. The recording is then used as a form of mirror to reflect on the general activity of a collective.

4. Using the term « materials » [matériaux] enables to summon up more diversity and plurality than, for example, « documents », which has a strong formal imaginary, or « data » [données] that has a strong numerical imaginary. But the term of materials doesn’t work easily with a specific verb, whereas activity and gesture should be qualified with a specific verb. The verb « to document » can then be used with this meaning: gather and organize various materials at the heart of practice.

Editorial de la quatrième édition 2025

 

Accéder au Guide de la quatrième édition 2025 et Contributeurs-Contributrices de la quatrième édition


English

Access to the English translation: Editorial- English

Access to Guide to the Fourth Edition 2025 Edition and List of Contributors to the Fourth Edition


 

Éditorial 2025
Recherche artistique : comptes-rendus de pratiques

Quatrième édition – PaaLabRes

Sommaire :

Introduction
Documenter les pratiques et la recherche informelle
Pratiques
Rendre-compte, Enquêter, Rechercher
Les contributions
Quatrième édition PaaLabRes, la suite
 


Introduction

PaaLabRes (Pratiques Artistiques en Actes, LABoratoire de REchercheS) est un collectif d’artistes, en existence à Lyon depuis 2011, qui tente de définir les contours d’une recherche menée par les personnes qui pratiquent elles-mêmes autour d’expressions artistiques qui ne débouchent pas sur des œuvres définitives.

L’objectif de PaaLabRes est de réunir par l’action, la réflexion et la recherche, des pratiques diversifiées qui ne se reconnaissent ni dans les formes figées des patrimoines, ni dans celles imposées par les industries culturelles. Ces pratiques font souvent place à la création collective, à l’improvisation, à la collaboration entre les arts, sans pourtant faire l’objet d’une identité excluant d’autres formes d’interaction ou de production. Remettant en cause l’autonomie de l’art par rapport à la société, elles se fondent au quotidien sur des contextes qui mêlent l’artistique au sociologique, au politique, au philosophique et aux logiques de transmission et d’éducation. De ce fait elles restent instables et changeantes, de véritables pratiques nomades et transversales.

 

Documenter les pratiques et la recherche informelle

La quatrième édition du site paalabres.org est liée à deux préoccupations. La première concerne la question de comment documenter le foisonnement des pratiques se déroulant le plus souvent dans l’anonymat. La deuxième tente de montrer qu’au sein de ces pratiques des démarches silencieuses de recherche sont à l’œuvre, souvent à l’insu des personnes concernées. La recherche artistique, pensée comme directement liée aux processus d’élaborations des pratiques, à la définition des projets, aux interactions entre les personnes qui y participent et éventuellement aux modes particuliers de documentation mis en œuvre (voir les stations « Débat » et « Artistic Turn » dans la première édition paalabres.org).

La diversité extraordinaire des pratiques remet en jeu la notion d’universalisme et secoue fortement l’hégémonie de certaines pratiques. Une telle diversité crée la nécessité d’inclure au sein de la production des mécanismes d’élaboration qui relèvent du bricolage, de l’expérimentation et de la recherche. Il ne s’agit plus simplement de se préoccuper de la conception des matériaux au cœur des actes artistiques, mais d’y inclure une approche plus globale concernant les différentes manières d’envisager les méthodes, les interactions, les médiations, la transmission, les situations d’apprentissage, le rapport aux institutions, etc. Pour être capable de s’orienter dans les dédales de l’écologie des pratiques, de ce foisonnement d’activités souvent antagonistes, il y a besoin de développer des outils de réflexion spécifiques. En premier lieu, il s’agit de décrire les pratiques sous tous leurs aspects et de les questionner pour en faire ressortir leurs problématiques différenciées. Un état des lieux semble nécessaire sous la forme de narrations décrivant en détail ce qui se passe lors d’un projet donné, de documentations des pratiques sur des supports variés et dans la formalisation des concepts inhérents aux actes pratiques dans le contexte donné, portant notamment sur les relations instables entre les intentions, la réalité quotidienne, la réalisation finale des productions et leur dissémination publique.

Les artistes n’ont souvent pas le temps, ou montrent peu d’intérêt à raconter les détails de leur pratique, de documenter des processus en vue de mener une réflexion critique. Souvent les artistes désirent que les regards ne se tournent que vers leurs productions achevées et non sur les coulisses de leur élaboration. Les explicitations sont jugées trop académiques et ne rendant pas justice au caractère unique des démarches artistiques, ou bien on considère que l’art devrait garder son autonomie et rester détaché du monde prosaïque.

Les coulisses de la recherche sont largement ignorées dans le contenu des publications des travaux qu’elle suscite (articles, livres, présentations dans les colloques, etc.). La présentation des résultats prime sur les tâtonnements qui les ont précédés. Les recherches sont pourtant pleines de mises en chantier, d’élaborations instables et de documents provisoires. Par exemple, la revue Agencements, Recherches et pratiques sociales en expérimentation a une rubrique « coulisse(s) » donnant « à lire des écritures majeures dans la recherche, mais qui restent confinées dans l’atelier où chacun-e travaille ou dans les coulisses de la recherche » [Bodineau&co, 2018, p.9].

Concernant les pratiques artistiques, un des risques est de laisser l’exclusivité des explications aux regards extérieurs. Pour dépasser les obstacles rencontrés par les protagonistes des pratiques, PaaLabRes propose des processus collectifs pour finaliser les contributions en mettant en interrelation des compétences diverses. Ainsi la narration d’un projet artistique peut être éclairée par une interview, notamment pour aider à préciser les points laissés obscurs ; l’expression orale est dans ce cas plus aisée, mais implique des capacités de transcription intelligentes. Les méthodes de documentation souvent très techniques par rapport aux divers supports impliquent aussi des collaborations. Dans ce contexte les capacités techniques doivent être sorties de leur spécialisation et inclure absolument des capacités de compréhension des enjeux en présence tels qu’ils sont perçus par ceux et celles directement impliquées dans l’élaboration des pratiques.

L’analyse critique des pratiques est en général considérée comme devant s’exprimer dans un texte écrit, éclairé par des références d’ouvrages déjà publiés sur des sujets pertinents. Dans le cas de la recherche artistique cette exigence n’est pas forcément ce qui convient le mieux au caractère subversif de certaines démarches artistiques. Mais l’invention de dispositifs textuels ou basés sur d’autres supports technologiques appropriés à l’esprit d’un projet artistique semble encore trop peu explorée et reste une proposition délicate. Comment envisager de manier à la fois les concepts dans toute leur complexité et leur présentation restant fidèle à la démarche artistique envisagée ? Comment à la fois exposer les points de vue esthétiques et les mettre en question ?

La narration, la documentation et le questionnement des pratiques sont par nature multivalents : ils impliquent des évènements (performances, présentations publiques, ateliers, colloques, etc.), des supports multiples (textes écrits, partitions, graphismes, vidéos, enregistrements audio, images, paroles), et de nombreuses médiations qui s’inscrivent sans cesse dans des processus d’interactions complexes.

L’utilisation des termes de « recherche artistique » dans le cadre de la quatrième édition n’est pas limitée à ce qui est très précisément formalisé dans les institutions d’enseignement supérieur et de recherche, sans exclure des textes reconnus dans la recherche formelle. Il faut rappeler que beaucoup de pratiques artistiques peuvent contenir des phases d’expérimentation et de processus qui peuvent être qualifiées de « recherches informelles ». Le projet principal du collectif PaaLabRes est de mettre en relation les antagonismes qui existent historiquement entre d’une part les pratiques artistiques et la recherche universitaire, et d’autre part entre les pratiques artistiques et le secteur chargé de l’enseignement de ces pratiques. En plus, la comparaison des pratiques artistiques avec des pratiques en usage dans des domaines ayant des résonances spéciales avec les arts (comme par exemple la sociologie, l’anthropologie, la linguistique…) peut être très utile à l’élaboration d’une réflexion plus générale sur la culture de notre monde d’aujourd’hui. Aussi les contributions de la quatrième édition restent très diverses et concernent tout autant les mondes de la recherche universitaire, de l’enseignement des arts, et de la diversité des pratiques dans le domaine des arts et autres disciplines qui lui sont liées.

L’objectif de la quatrième édition est de mettre en pleine lumière des pratiques plus ou moins éphémères et confidentielles qui constituent l’horizon de la culture présente. Il ne s’agit pas de proposer ici des modèles pouvant se développer dans des méthodes en vue de résultats garantis normés, mais plutôt d’avoir accès à des références dont on peut s’inspirer et en comparer les procédures. C’est pour cette raison que la quatrième édition n’est pas limitée dans le temps, mais reste ouverte jusqu’au moment où on aura le sentiment d’avoir un trop plein d’informations. Tout le monde, à tout moment, peut proposer une contribution à cette quatrième édition.

 

Pratiques

Les actes de la pratique s’inscrivent dans le temps, les uns après les autres, sans donner la possibilité d’avoir une vue panoptique au moment de leur accomplissement. Pendant le faire il est difficile de réfléchir à tous les éléments qui entrent en jeu, ce n’est que de manière rétrospective que les actions peuvent être évaluées. Les décisions au cours de la pratique sont rapides voire immédiates, elles peuvent à tout moment susciter des changements de direction, mais sans prendre le temps d’en mesurer vraiment les conséquences [voir Bourdieu, 1980].

Dans la succession du langage la signification d’un mot peut être changée par la succession d’autres éléments de grammaire, mais au moment où il est prononcé, il porte en lui une signification. Celle-ci peut être perçue de manière unilatérale, mais aussi offrir des ouvertures vers la multitude de sens qu’il serait susceptible de produire. Le même phénomène tend à se manifester dans l’acte de faire quelque chose, cet acte peut changer de sens par rapport aux actes qui vont suivre, mais au moment du faire, celui ou celle qui l’accomplit ne peut que se concentrer sur ce qui fait sens à ce moment-là dans cet acte particulier.

Comment alors envisager les pratiques dans le domaine de la recherche ? L’inscription des pratiques dans une temporalité rend nécessaire de prendre au sérieux les processus par lesquels les actions en train de se faire évoluent en se heurtant à des contextes. Nicolas Sidoroff [2024] définit les pratiques de la manière suivante :

Des procédures dans un contexte.

Avec des dimensions institutionnelles.

Et elles mènent plus loin que les relations entre individus.

Les dimensions institutionnelles font partie du contexte, mais il est souvent nécessaire de les expliciter pour ne pas oublier et pouvoir signifier ce qu’elles recoupent. Il s’agit d’une des cinq dimensions que propose Jacques Ardoino [1999] pour décrire le plus précisément possible les interactions humaines[1]. Elle est travaillée par les démarches dites « institutionnelles » (psychothérapie, pédagogies, analyse institutionnelles). Cette dimension est multiple, elle rassemble les valeurs, normes, croyances sociales, les modèles idéologiques et culturels, les histoires dans lesquelles nous sommes tous et toutes enchevêtrées, les imaginaires, les fantômes (des personnes non présentes mais qui ont des influences sur l’activité en cours), etc. De plus les pratiques dépassent

les seules relations sociales pour participer aux transformations des rapports sociaux (en appui avec Danièle Kergoat) : aller plus loin que les relations entre-individus. Les pratiques se développent dans un mouvement réciproque. Elles sont portées par un « sujet collectif producteur de sens et acteur de sa propre histoire » [Kergoat, 2009, p.114], et elles permettent dans le même temps à un tel sujet de devenir collectif producteur et acteur. [Sidoroff, 2024, p.156]

Et pour finir dans le cadre de cette édition PaaLabRes, considérer les pratiques comme procédures dans un contexte et succession d’actes amène la possibilité de les raconter. Les pratiques se mettent en récit : il s’est passé cela ou plutôt, et mieux, des personnes ont fait[2], et au présent de l’action pour se placer au plus près de celle-ci. On fait, nous faisons, je fais. Alors l’écriture au sens large, ce que nous appelons documenter, peut s’engager, et avec elle, des recherches sur les fabrications et constructions artistiques.

Les actions en train de se faire impliquées dans le verbe actif de « musiquer » sont des actes univoques mais multiples [Small, 1998] : elles se déroulent, elles durent, ne sont pas ponctuelles et elles doivent se confronter constamment à des contextes qui changent aussi vite que le temps météorologique. Au moment de prendre une décision pour faire une action, la pensée est de l’ordre de l’immédiat. Tout est déterminé à la fois par le passé des acteurs (les habitudes, les savoirs acquis) et par la situation à laquelle il faut faire face (en présence d’autrui et d’environnements particuliers). L’acte peut alors rester dans une phase figée dans le conventionnel si l’on n’a pas les moyens de se détacher de l’obsession à bien faire. Mais le temps qui suit la décision peut aussi se présenter comme un chemin à parcourir (à errer) au cours duquel vont pouvoir émerger des évènements imprévus et ouvrir des options : les notions d’essais et erreurs, de tâtonnements, de bricolage, d’expérimentation et de recherche prennent alors tout leur sens.

Les actions en train de se faire sont situées [Haraway, 2007] mais sont aussi multiples, elles donnent lieu à une multitude d’injonctions souvent contradictoires. De ce fait, elles s’inscrivent toujours dans des lisières se plaçant, selon Nicolas Sidoroff, entre des « noyaux » qu’il définit dans le cadre de ses propres pratiques comme « performance, création, médiation-formation, recherche, administration et technique-lutherie » (voir Lisières, 3e édition PaaLabRes). Chaque acte se situe en intensité différentes dans chacun de ces noyaux faisant exister des lisières et vivant dans de tels écosystèmes. Potentiellement, il est en grande partie dans un seul noyau, mais ce faisant il entre aussi en interaction avec tous les autres.

Dans le livre de Fernand Oury et Françoise Thébaudin, Pédagogie institutionnelle, Mise en place et pratique des institutions dans la classe [1995], on peut trouver des exemples très intéressants de « monographies », récits d’évènements s’inscrivant dans le cadre de leur pédagogie. À partir de transcription de propos tenus par des jeunes élèves et replacés dans leur contexte, l’analyse est toujours faite non pas par une seule personne du haut de son expertise, mais par plusieurs membres d’une équipe. Les discussions sont donc toujours non péremptoires et reflètent des incertitudes, des ambivalences et des complexités. Sont alors évoqués des ouvrages ou des notions à caractère scientifique, notamment tirés de la psychanalyse, qui viennent enrichir le débat et aider à la compréhension, mais qui ne sont jamais considérés comme relevant de la vérité pure, ils sont plutôt juxtaposés comme éléments parmi d’autres dans l’analyse collective d’évènements complexes et particuliers. Les paroles des élèves sont de cette façon mises toujours au premier plan.

 

Rendre-compte, Enquêter, Rechercher

Les artistes liés en particulier aux formes éphémères ont des difficultés à accepter le principe de documentation de leur production. Par exemple, dans le milieu de l’improvisation, la publication d’un enregistrement semble être complètement antinomique avec la notion d’un acte situé, réalisé dans le présent et qui ne se répétera plus jamais sous cette forme[3]. La documentation d’un évènement semble impliquer qu’il doit servir de modèle exemplaire aux évènements qui vont suivre. La modélisation est vue comme susceptible de créer les conditions d’une conformité servile à l’ordre établi dans la répétition immuable des mêmes choses. La diversification des objets de documentation (récits d’observation, discussions, consultations d’archives, comptes-rendus d’expériences voisines, textes en lien, vidéos, enregistrements, etc.) tend à faire disparaître l’idée de modèle au profit de celui de l’enquête. Elle convoque tout un ensemble de matériaux[4] qui paraissent à première vue peu intéressants mais qui sont essentiels dans la définition du contexte dans lequel se situe l’action.

Dans l’appel à contributions, nous avions envisagé d’explorer différents modes de présentation au public des contenus de recherche, qu’ils soient artistiques ou liés à d’autres domaines universitaires, qu’ils soient informels ou s’inscrivant dans une formalisation de type universitaire. Ces différentes manières de rendre compte, de documenter l’élaboration d’une pratique pour faire honneur aux processus d’enquête et de recherche qui souvent restent implicites, ne sont pas simples à inventer.

Les manière de rendre compte sont aussi difficiles à recueillir. Dans les mondes de la musique, la phrase presque magique, « on fait comme ça », arrive très régulièrement. Mais sans instrument sous la main, comment expliciter cette façon de « faire comme ça » ? Enregistrer et transcrire sont nos outils habituels d’enquête. Nos rencontres et interviews se déroulent régulièrement dans des lieux de vie (maisons, appartements, cafés, vidéo-conférences, etc.) où les conditions ne sont pas optimales car les bruits parasites y sont nombreux et viennent perturber la compréhension des enregistrements dans les phases de transcription.

Expérimenter les divers moyens d’envisager des modes de présentation de la recherche alternatifs à la seule « thèse » présentée sur un texte écrit selon des règles en vigueur dans l’enseignement supérieur reste pour nous un objectif très important. Il s’agit de présenter des objets qui encapsulent les contenus à la fois artistiques et conceptuels essentiels d’une pratique sans en dévoiler tous les détails pertinents pour les spécialistes. On peut envisager des objets capables d’être appréhendés par un public et donnant envie d’aller visiter plus avant le contenu d’un récit, son analyse et les divers documents qui l’accompagnent. Ces objets peuvent être par exemple une conférence/performance, un objet mix-media, un collage, un fichier audio, un texte animé, etc.

 

Les contributions

L’édition est organisée en cinq catégories :

  1. Al(t)er/Retour. Trois articles portent sur l’Afrique et les allers et retours entre ce continent et le reste du monde.
  2. InDisciplines – Flux. Deux contributions portent sur les interrelations entre disciplines artistiques qui tendent dans les formes improvisées à être « indisciplinées ». Sont abordées plus spécifiquement les relations entre la danse et l’environnement et entre la danse et la musique.
  3. Fabuler – EnQuête. Cette catégorie concerne les préoccupations de recherche allant de la formalisation universitaire à des démarches plus informelles. Elle ne comporte pour l’instant qu’un seul article.
  4. Fabrique-à-dispositifs. Trois articles sont dans cette catégorie qui porte sur l’invention de dispositifs, situations élaborées à partir d’un contexte particulier mettant les personnes qui y participent dans des démarches de création liées à leur pratique.
  5. BidOuille – Électro. Deux articles portent sur l’utilisation des technologies électroniques et numériques dans des pratiques artistiques.

Une dernière catégorie, qui pour l’instant ne contient pas de contribution, Trajets, portera sur des projets qui se déroulent dans des lieux plus ou moins éloignés et impliquent pour les personnes qui y participent des voyages permettant la réflexion avant, après ou entre les actions se déroulant sur les différents lieux.

Voici pêle-mêle la présentation des dix premières contributions :

Emmanuelle Pépin et Lionel Garcin ont présenté une conférence/performance sur les relations entre la danse et la musique. La performance a consisté en un dialogue entre une danseuse et un musicien improvisant ensemble, explorant et montrant par des actes les relations danse/musique. Du côté des relations entre le musicien et la danseuse pendant la performance, rien n’était prévu à l’avance, il s’agissait bien d’une improvisation, qui s’inscrivait pourtant dans une longue série d’improvisations mêlant danse et musique par les deux artistes (pas exclusivement dans le format du duo en question) ceci sur une très longue durée. Pendant certains moments de la performance, Emmanuelle a lu à haute voix des extraits d’un texte qu’elle avait préparé à l’avance, tout en choisissant ces extraits de manière spontanée ou aléatoire. Elle a aussi improvisé des paroles inspirées de son texte tout en dansant dans l’espace. Lionel pendant ce temps a continué à improviser des sons en se déplaçant dans l’espace avec le souci de ne pas couvrir le texte énoncé. Le texte lui-même se situait dans un « écotone » (ou lisière) entremêlant l’exposé des éléments mis en jeu et la description des phénomènes physiques, corporels et acoustiques, tout ceci unifié par des formulations poétiques. L’intérêt principal de ce genre de performance est que l’acte du « dire » est complètement inséré dans le tissu même de ce qui est dansé et musiqué, mais aussi que le « dire » en train de se faire est directement mis en pratique dans la danse et la musique (sans qu’il y ait pourtant une relation directe entre mots, sons et mouvements comme forme de pléonasme). Dans un seul mouvement le texte explicatif, dans sa forme poétique, et le déroulement des matériaux de la danse, de la musique (et de leur théâtralisation) forment un tout unifié sans éviter la présentation de ce qui constitue sa complexité.

Les trois contributions concernant les allers et retours entre l’Afrique et le reste du monde, c’est-à-dire l’interview de Djely Madi Kouyaté, les commentaires sur le livre de Famoudou Konaté et l’article de Lukas Ligeti décrivent de longs parcours de vie remplis d’ambivalences. Toutes les trois concernent des personnalités qui ont grandi dans des environnements traditionnels, les villages de Guinée pour Djely Madi Kouyaté et Famoudou Konaté, le milieu de l’élite intellectuelle européenne pour Lukas Ligeti (qui est le fils du compositeur bien connu), et qui sont partis « à l’aventure » vers le reste de l’Afrique puis le reste du monde pour les deux premiers, et pour plusieurs pays en Afrique pour le dernier. Dans les trois cas, le voyage fait ressortir des contradictions liées au choc des cultures.

Djely Madi Kouyaté, après avoir grandi dans la tradition d’un village guinéen, lorsqu’il a rejoint le groupe Kotéba en Côte-d’Ivoire, a dû faire face à un processus d’unification des pratiques provenant de plusieurs pays africains et à l’élaboration de procédures liées au spectacle et aux technologies inspirés en partie par la culture occidentale. Le groupe a fait de nombreuses tournées en Europe, ce qui a mené Djely Madi à s’installer à Paris où il a dû interagir de manière plus approfondie avec la culture ambiante. Se pose alors pour lui la question de ne rien perdre de la richesse de sa propre tradition malgré les quelques aménagements qu’il a dû accepter.

Pour Famoudou Konaté, l’histoire est très similaire : il est sélectionné dans son village pour faire partie des Ballets Africains qui réunit les meilleurs artistes de la musique et de la danse de la Guinée indépendante. Cet ensemble fait plusieurs fois le tour du monde et lui permet d’établir une reconnaissance internationale. Il devient ensuite musicien indépendant et se consacre aussi à l’enseignement des bases fondamentales de sa tradition en Afrique et en Europe, pour en assurer la pérennité dans un monde de culture mondialisé par les médias électroniques.

Dans le cas de Lukas Ligeti, il vient en Afrique avec ses propres représentations liées à des études ethnomusicologiques et l’écriture de pièces influencées par la musique africaine. Il doit au contact des réalités culturelles africaines adapter sa pratique de percussionniste, compositeur et praticien des musiques électroniques aux contextes africains qui mêlent les pratiques traditionnelles aux apports des diverses technologies liées à l’électricité. Puis en retour se pose la question de comment envisager reprendre tous ces éléments dans le contexte des musiques expérimentales occidentales.

Une autre approche de documentation a été choisie dans le cas du « Conte du “conte” », résultat d’une série de quatre interviews séparés aux quatre protagonistes du spectacle immersif « Le Conte d’un futur commun », Louis Clément, Delphine Descombin, Yovan Girard et Maxime Hurdequint. Ce projet collaboratif centré sur les questions écologistes liées au futur de la planète avait la particularité de regrouper des personnalités très proches les unes des autres en termes de liens familiaux, d’amitié, d’appartenance à des réseaux ou de proximité géographique. Mais les quatre récits parallèles du long processus de réalisation du spectacle faisaient ressortir des différences de perception sur comment les choses s’étaient effectivement passées. Chacune ou chacun avait construit une affabulation du rôle et de la position des autres et dans leur récit mettait en scène des conversations fictives pour décrire les éléments des débats et des interactions nécessaires à la réalisation du spectacle. Ces différences ne portaient pas sur des désaccords concernant le projet lui-même en termes artistiques ou de contenu politique, mais plutôt de subtiles nuances de sensibilité. En particulier, le récit de la conteuse, Delphine, se présentait souvent lors de l’interview sous la forme d’une série de « contes », non pas dans le sens d’invention de situations fictives, mais plutôt dans l’emploi d’un style narratif pour faire passer les informations qu’elle souhaitait nous donner. D’où l’idée, du côté de l’équipe éditoriale de PaaLabRes de réorganiser les différents textes de transcription des interviews sous la forme de dialogues dans ce qui pouvait ressembler à un conte décrivant la fable du « conte.

On retrouve les mêmes subtilités de nuances dans le récit de la création par le danseur Min Tanaka de la ferme du Body Weather au Japon, par trois artistes de la danse – Katerina Bakatsaki, Oguri et Christine Quoiraud – qui ont participé à ce projet pendant la période 1985-90. Deux sessions ont eu lieu en visio-conférence, séparées par un intervalle de neuf mois, réalisées cette fois-ci en commun avec tout le monde présent. Les deux entretiens se sont déroulés en anglais, avec la présence pour PaaLabRes de Jean-Charles François et Nicolas Sidoroff. Aucune des personnes présentes ne maîtrisait l’anglais en tant que langue maternelle et tout le monde s’exprimait avec de forts accents d’origine étrangère (une Grecque vivant à Amsterdam, un Japonais vivant à Los Angeles, et trois personnes vivant en France). D’où la difficulté dans la réalisation éditoriale à accéder à une signification claire et précise des propos lors de la transcription des enregistrements. En plus, la remémoration d’évènements qui ont eu lieu il y a déjà longtemps n’a pas été facile pour les trois artistes, et chacun de leurs récits a reflété trois manières différentes d’envisager cette expérience fondatrice de leur vie jusqu’à nos jours. Aussi il a paru nécessaire dans la réalisation éditoriale de préserver dans la mesure du possible la diversité du style de narration utilisé par les trois protagonistes. Par ailleurs, la représentation que se faisaient les deux « paalabriens » musiciens des choses divergeait quelque peu par rapport à celles des trois artistes de la danse : la signification des mêmes termes dans le domaine de la danse et dans celui de la musique n’est pas de même nature, et la perception des relations entre danse et musique peut beaucoup changer selon le domaine auquel on appartient. L’ignorance totale des deux musiciens vis-à-vis des circonstances liées à l’époque de la création de la ferme du Body Weather, a permis des débats très intéressants sur la présence ou non de « communs » dans le groupe de la ferme de Min Tanaka, sur sa volonté de ne jamais fixer les choses dans des formes définitives et surtout sur l’idée de ne pas créer des situations où un pouvoir exercé par quiconque s’imposerait à la communauté tout entière. C’est l’absence d’obligation pourtant combinée avec la nécessité d’un engagement absolu de tous les instants quelles que soient les actions entreprises, qui semblent avoir été la force principale mise en œuvre dans l’idée du Body Weather.

Warren Burt, qui se décrit comme compositeur, performeur, fabricant d’instruments, poète sonore, cinéaste, artiste multimédia, écrivain, créateur d’œuvres visuelles et sonores et surtout comme musicien impertinent (irrelevant musician), retrace l’histoire récente de l’évolution fantastique des technologies sonores en montrant comment elles ont influencé tout au long de sa vie ses propres positions esthétiques et politiques, dans la réalisation d’actions très précises. Son militantisme pour une utilisation immédiate des outils les moins coûteux, les plus démocratiques offerts par les technologies n’a pas varié : l’utilisation du bricolage le plus ingénieux, pourtant le plus simple, en vue d’une esthétique la plus riche qui soit pour des usages les plus pauvres en termes d’argent dépensé. L’accès démocratique à bas coût impossible dans les années 1970, sauf pour quelques privilégiés travaillant ou étudiant dans des studios collectifs installés dans des institutions à gros budget, devient avec les ordinateurs personnels portables une réalité pour une grande partie de la population mondiale. Mais, ironie de l’histoire, cet accès, qu’on pensait au départ comme étant forcément expérimental et alternatif, dès lors que tout le monde possède les capacités de manipuler les objets sonores (et autres) à sa guise, est en grave danger de ne prendre que la forme d’un conformisme généralisé généré par des médias manipulateurs.

L’évolution récente des nouvelles technologies sonores a permis le développement d’outils d’interface, (thérémine, smartphones) manipulés par des musiciens performeurs contrôlant des machines et distribuant les sons dans l’espace. Les sonorités, déterminées par le compositeur et mises en mémoire dans un système électronique particulier, ne sont plus directement produites par les instrumentistes qui deviennent alors des collaborateurs du compositeur pour déterminer ce qui va réellement se passer lors d’une performance. Cette nouvelle situation change les conditions des rapports entre ceux et celles qui envisagent des agencements particuliers, celles et ceux qui construisent les outils technologiques adéquats pour les réaliser, et ceux et celles qui les mettent en forme sur la scène en temps réel. Ce sont ces aspects de collaboration qui ont fait l’objet des entretiens avec Vincent-Raphaël Carinola et Jean Geoffroy. Rétrospectivement, il aurait été nécessaire d’inclure dans l’interview le troisième personnage responsable de la construction technologique dans le cadre des nouvelles lutheries (Christophe Lebreton). Il n’est pas exclu dans le futur de pallier l’absence de ce troisième volet de la conception musicale collégiale.

Dans l’esprit de ces deux musiciens, Jean et Vincent, les frontières entre création et interprétation sont devenues très poreuses, mais elles ne remettent pas en cause pour autant la séparation fondamentale propre à la musique occidentale entre le compositeur et interprète. De cette manière ils s’inscrivent dans la continuité de l’histoire de cette musique, car les collaborations entre compositeur et interprète, et aussi avec les luthiers ont très souvent eu lieu dans le passé, malgré la spécialisation progressive des rôles dans leur fonction professionnelle. Comme dans les musiques à caractère processuel de la seconde partie du 20e siècle, le compositeur ne détermine pas complètement les évènements qui vont se dérouler sur scène mais propose une architecture sonore et régulée dans laquelle l’interprète doit entrer en jeu de manière créative. L’instrumentiste devient un sculpteur de la matière sonore en temps réel, un metteur en scène des données du système, ce qui crée les conditions d’une nouvelle virtuosité et se démarque ainsi de l’utilisation des interfaces (comme dans certaines installations ou jeux-vidéo) par le public en général.

La rencontre effective des différences (culturelles, artistiques, économiques, d’origine géographique, de contenus de recherche, etc.) dans des situations pratiques mises en commun est d’une très grande importante par rapport au contexte dans lequel nous vivons actuellement. Dans tous les cas, que ce soit dans la rencontre des différents domaines artistiques, ou celle des différentes esthétiques, ou celle de différents groupes constitués en communauté, ou encore celle liée à l’accueil des réfugiés, il est nécessaire d’inventer un terrain pratique de médiation et ne pas se contenter de juxtaposer ou de superposer la diversité des expressions. Il s’agit de cette manière d’éviter la domination d’un groupe humain sur un autre dans un double mouvement de respect des différentes expressions et de détermination d’une pratique commune entre les groupes basée sur des principes d’égalité démocratique.

Depuis plus de trente ans, Giacomo Spica Capobianco a développé des actions pour permettre à des jeunes des quartiers défavorisés d’accéder à des pratiques musicales conformes à leurs aspirations en leur permettant d’inventer leurs propres formes d’expression. Il a toujours eu le souci de mettre aussi ces jeunes en relation avec les pratiques d’autres sphères de la société. Il a organisé des rencontres entre des groupes de styles très différents et développé avec les membres de l’Orchestre National Urbain des dispositifs d’improvisation permettant à chaque groupe de travailler sur des matériaux communs hors des références culturelles majeures à l’œuvre chez les participants. Le document proposé dans cette édition, Création collective nomade, est le résultat d’une action encadrée par l’Orchestre National Urbain qui a eu lieu pendant l’automne 2023 regroupant de jeunes réfugiés de divers centres d’hébergement avec des étudiants du CNSMDL et de l’Université Lyon II. Il contient à la fois des textes de deux observateurs dans le projet Joris Cintéro et Jean-Charles François et une vidéo réalisée par Giacomo Spica Capobianco et Sébastien Leborgne qui contient une série de prises de paroles de personnes ayant participé et des extraits des activités musicales et dansées qui ont eu lieu au cours du projet.

Nous publions un extrait de la thèse de doctorat de Karine Hahn qui porte sur « Les pratiques (ré)sonnantes du territoire de Dieulefit, Drôme : une autre manière de faire la musique ». L’extrait s’intitule « L’épisode du métronome », où elle relate l’apparition inattendue d’un métronome au sein d’une fanfare démocratique. L’objet métronome, apporté par un des membres du groupe, fait une irruption drastique dans la pratique d’un ensemble qui résiste d’habitude plutôt avec véhémence à toute imposition autoritaire extérieure. L’analyse que fait Karine Hahn de cet évènement se fait dans un contexte où elle a choisi délibérément de faire partie de cette fanfare « Tapacymbal », pour à la fois vivre une pratique de l’intérieur de manière épidermique, et pouvoir l’observer d’un regard plus détaché. Elle se démarque d’une règle souvent énoncée que pour faire de la recherche, on ne doit pas s’impliquer dans les objets qui sont étudiés. Si elle est insérée dans le groupe qu’elle observe, elle risque par son vécu de se trouver dans une situation d’être émotionnellement solidaire des problèmes rencontrés, et si elle reste extérieure, elle risque de n’en pas comprendre vraiment les enjeux. Souvent les chercheurs extérieurs à leur objet n’arrivent pas à se poser les questions qui sont pertinentes pour le groupe qu’ils observent, en tentant de faire apparaître les structures implicites à l’œuvre, ils tendent à taper à côté des cymbales. La position de Karine dans le groupe lui interdit toute approche surplombante, sa position de « savante » issue des conservatoires à finalités professionnalisantes est complètement remise en cause par une situation qui réveille ses propres attitudes négatives vis-à-vis de l’usage oppressant du métronome. L’expérience du groupe face à l’usage de cet outil, qu’elle doit subir, lui fait remettre complètement en question ses représentations et change la nature de son regard d’experte. Cela ne remet pas en cause son savoir, mais le relativise à la lumière d’un contexte. C’est dans le sens de cette tension entre l’intérieur et l’extérieur d’une pratique donnée que se situe le militantisme du collectif PaaLabRes vis-à-vis d’une recherche artistique « informelle » : seule l’expérience effective produit une connaissance des enjeux, et il faut être capable de s’en détacher en vue d’une réflexivité.

Pour terminer ce tour de table des dix premières contributions à la 4e édition, les deux principaux éditeurs, Jean-Charles François et Nicolas Sidoroff, présentent « L’Atelier de l’Autre musique », le récit d’un atelier dans lequel des situations de production artistique collective sont susceptibles de provoquer un débat significatif au sujet d’une question particulière, ici les partitions graphiques et leur mise en pratique effective lors de leur interprétation. L’hypothèse expérimentale était la suivante : les juxtapositions et superpositions de comptes-rendus de recherche (en vigueur dans le formatage généralisé des colloques internationaux) ne parviennent pas à développer des débats significatifs. Elles restent du domaine de l’information plutôt que de l’échange approfondi d’idées, parce qu’il n’y a pas la mise en place d’une pratique commune créant un contexte où l’on parle des mêmes objets en connaissance de cause. C’est à partir d’une expérience commune que peuvent émerger les différences de sensibilités vis-à-vis d’actions réellement vécues ensemble, alors que l’écoute passive des présentations académiques tend à ne produire que des réactions polies (ou des rejets définitifs).

La quatrième édition de paalabres.org contribue donc modestement à explorer les différentes manières possibles de rendre compte des pratiques en essayant de trouver des solutions éditoriales qui respectent leur contenu artistique. L’idéal souvent difficile à atteindre est de trouver des manières de « mettre en pratique » le compte-rendu et la documentation dans des processus identiques aux démarches d’actions et de recherche, de trouver une coïncidence heureuse entre l’élaboration des objets artistiques, les récits des pratiques et la réflexion critique.

 

Quatrième édition PaaLabRes, la suite

Plusieurs contributions sont en cours d’élaboration :

  • Pom Bouvier, match aller-retour Lyon-St Julien Molin-Molette, va-et vient entre l’écoute des environnements et les improvisations qui en découlent.
     
  • György Kurtag Jr, travail de production d’informatique musicale avec de jeunes enfants.
     
  • Yves Favier, Jean-Charles François, György Kurtag et Emmanuelle Pépin, « Trajets CEPI », série de rencontres autour de l’improvisation danse/musique/scéno-active à Valcivières, Bordeaux, Lyon, Esino, Nice, Budapest et Cabasse. Trajets entre les lieux, temps privilégié pour la réflexion.
     
  • Reinhard Gagel, « OHO ! Offhandopera – impromptu music theater » [OHO ! Spontanopéra – théâtre musical instantané], Improviser un opéra.
     
  • Karine Hahn, continuation de la publication d’extraits de sa thèse « Les pratiques (ré)sonnantes du territoire de Dieulefit, Drôme : une autre manière de faire la musique ».

Ces contributions seront publiées dès que possible.
 
D’autres contributions sont envisagées dans le futur :

  • Anan Atoyama, son travail sur l’occupation de l’espace scénique et les questions de migrations climatiques.
     
  • Jean-François Charles et Nicolas Sidoroff, sur l’accompagnement musical en direct de films muets.
     
  • Marina Cyrino et Mathias Koole, conférences/performances sur la flûte et la guitare dans la musique improvisée.
     
  • Kristin Guttenberg, sur sa pratique de la danse/musique improvisée dans des lieux improbables.
     
  • Anan Atoyama, Vlatko Kučan et Jean-Charles François, sur la question du corps et de l’espace dans l’improvisation musique et danse.
     
  • Gilles Laval, sur les trajets européens des 100 guitares et l’idée d’une université nomade.
     
  • Noémi Lefebvre, lectures collectives à voix hautes du livre Parle.
     
  • Mary Oliver, sur ses expériences de musicienne improvisatrice avec des artistes de la danse.
     
  • Nicolas Sidoroff, sur les fanfares dans les manifestations politiques.
     
  • Tam Thi Pham, musicienne vietnamienne, joueuse de dan-bau, sur sa pratique des musiques traditionnelles du Vietnam et de l’improvisation expérimentale.
     
Le Collectif PaaLabRes :
Anan Atoyama, Samuel Chagnard, Jean-Charles François, Laurent Grappe, Karine Hahn,
Gilles Laval, Noémi Lefebvre, Pascal Pariaud, Nicolas Sidoroff, Gérald Venturi.

 


Références bibliographiques

ARDOINO, Jacques. (1999). Éducation et politique. Paris : Anthropos Economica, coll. Éducation (2e éd.).

BECKER, Howard S. (2004). Écrire les sciences sociales, commencer et terminer son article, sa thèse ou son livre. Paris : Economica, coll. Méthodes des sciences sociales (éd. orig. Writing for Social Scientists. How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article, University of Chicago Press, 1986, trad. Patricia Fogarty et Alain Guillemin).

BOURDIEU, Pierre. (1980). Le sens pratique, Paris, Editions de Minuit.

BODINEAU, Martine & co. (2018). « Édito », dans Agencements, Recherches et pratiques sociales en expérimentation, n°1, p. 7-9. doi.org

HARAWAY, Donna J. (2007). « Savoirs situés : la question de la science dans le féminisme et le privilège de la perspective partielle », dans Manifeste cyborg et autres essais : sciences, fictions, féminismes, édité par Laurence Allard, Delphine Gardey, et Nathalie Magnan. Paris : Exils Éditeur, coll. Essais, p. 107-142 (trad. par Denis Petit et Nathalie Magnan, éd. orig. Feminist Studies, 14, 1988).
HARAWAY, Donna J. (1988). « Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective », in Feminist Studies 14(3), p. 575‑99.

KERGOAT, Danièle. (2009). « Dynamique et consubstantialité des rapports sociaux », dans DORLIN, Elsa, Sexe, race, classe : pour une épistémologie de la domination, Paris : PUF, coll. Actuel Marx confrontation, p. 111-125.

OURY, Fernand & THÉBAUDIN, Françoise. (1995). Pédagogie institutionnelle, Mise en place et pratique des institutions dans la classe. Vigneux : Éd. Matrice.

SIDOROFF, Nicolas. (2024). « La recherche n’existe pas, c’est une pratique ! » Agencements, Recherches et pratiques sociales en expérimentation, n°10, p153-57. doi.org
 


1. Les autres dimensions sont : individuelle, interindividuelle, groupale et organisationnelle.

2. Conseil d’écriture d’Howard Becker : [pensez à] « qui est responsable des actes dont votre phrase fait le constat ? » [2004 (1986), p. 13].

3. Cette position vis-à-vis de la publication des enregistrements d’improvisation à l’extérieur des personnes participantes n’empêche pas l’utilisation de l’enregistrement sonore comme outil de travail dans différents dispositifs de réécoute. L’enregistrement est alors utilisé comme une forme de miroir permettant la réflexion sur l’activité générale d’un collectif.

4. L’utilisation du terme « matériaux » permet de convoquer plus de diversité et de pluralité que par exemple « documents » qui a un fort imaginaire formel ou « données » qui a un fort imaginaire chiffré. Mais matériaux ne vient pas facilement avec un verbe spécifique, alors qu’il faudrait qualifier l’activité et les gestes. Le verbe « documenter » peut alors être utilisé avec cette signification : rassembler et organiser divers matériaux au cœur de la pratique.

Famoudou Konaté (English)

Access to French original text.

 

Commentaries on Famoudou Konaté’s Book,
Mémoires d’un musicien africain
 
Jean-Charles François
2025

 

Sommaire :

Introduction
The Creation of the Guinea Ballets Africains
The choice to enter the Ballets Africains
The Ballets Africains, between Emancipation and Oppression
Artistic Independence Acquired Thanks to Teaching
Conclusion
 

Introduction

In 2022, Famoudou Konaté, “great representative of Guinea”s Malinke musical tradition”[1] published a remarkable book, Mémoires d’un musician africain, Ma vie – mon djembe – ma culture [Memories of an African musician, My life – my djembe – my culture], written in collaboration with Thomas Ott, who “was a university professor of music pedagogy in Berlin”.
 
Far from being a simple autobiography, the author offers a thorough account of the various artistic, social and political issues that an African musician had to face in the period from 1940 to the present day: growing up in a traditional village in Guinea, touring the world as an artist representing independent Guinea, learning to read and write as an adult, becoming a teacher in Guinea and Europe, to reflecting deeply on his own practice and the tradition in which it is embedded. Famoudou Konaté tells us with a wealth of detail and analysis about many aspects of his own life, touching on domains such as musical practice, ethnomusicology, African history, geopolitics, sociology of artistic practices, instrument building, playing techniques, pedagogy of oral music, and to unify it all, the presentation of a rich philosophy of life. However, this book doesn’t pretend to be recognized as “academic”, anyone can have access to the global overview of his practice, with additionally numerous narratives, stories and tales, that illustrate with humor the artistic and autobiographical information.
 
In his introduction to the book, Thomas Ott explains its genesis. After learning to read and write while touring the world with the Ballets Africains, Konaté took the habit of writing “a great number of autobiographical notes (…) in French over many years” (page 15, my translation). Thomas Ott’s contribution to the book was to classify these notes, to translate them into German,[2] and assemble them into a meaningful form. He describes two happy turning points in Famoudou’s life:

  1. Firstly, his selection to join the Ballets Africains representing Guinea as principal djembe player, while according to the village tradition, he had to get married and give up his musical practice.
  2. And then, much later, he left the Ballets Africains, which had become for him an oppressive organization thus limiting the extension of his internationally recognized artistic posture. He then became an independent artist, thanks in part to the teaching of his music and culture in his village in Guinea and in European institutions.

At every turning point in Konaté’s life, the ambivalence that can be observed in any practice is revealed, requiring him to trace his own pathway among a weave of contradictions, enabling him to acquire a clear universal perspective in his multidimensional accounts. The conditions in which all actual practices are carried out is it occur in obscurity, in the midst of elements that play against each other. As in improvisation, the actors have to trace their way for better or worse, starting from what was already built up, without having enough time to reflect in a rational fashion. But this path is not like writing, where each individual word weaves a global meaning with the series that has just been read and the one that is about to be read. In oral practice, the contradictions, the complexities, have to be faced in the present, and you must play with them without thinking of the consequences. With a sufficient lapse of time, however, it is possible to write some reflexive notes and succeed in clarifying globally the uncertainties of circumstances. In this sense, practice is not consciously ideologic, even if the ideologies can be unconsciously expressed in the behavior of the human body.
 
Thomas Ott tells us that Famoudou Konaté’s music was for him “the bridge towards Africa in general”. He gives the following precisions:

True to the saying “Who only knows the music knows nothing about the music”, very soon I began to take an interest in Africa’s political, social, and economic problems. (Page 19)

For my part, I will say that I don’t know Konaté’s music or the African music and dance very well, but thanks to reading his book, I have a more precise idea of what is globally at stake within these contexts, with all the useful information he gives on the musical, artisanal, political, social, economical and cultural aspects of his artistic practice and the links he is able to weave between all these domains.
 
 

The Creation of the Guinea Ballets Africains

In 1958, General De Gaulle’s government proposed to the French African sub-Saharan colonies their independence with an association within a “Communauté franco-africaine”. Only one country, Guinea, on Sékou Touré’s initiative (he became Guinea’s first president), rejected in a referendum this association. In less than two months, France withdrew all its administrative and economic support, thus ending all relationships.
 
In order to assert complete independence, Guinea needed to be recognized as a nation throughout the world. It absolutely had to affirm its African cultural identity and to develop diplomatic tools to represent it. This led to the creation of the Ballets Africains (based on the model of ensembles already in existence) bringing together the country’s best music and dance artists. The essence of the new nation had to be represented, its specific tradition, free from outside influences, in a single evening, at the end of which any audience would be able to understand what it was all about. To achieve this, there seemed to be no other choice but to conform to the laws of the dominant representation of the time, that is, the one determined by Western thought in both cultural manifestations and diplomacy. To create the spectacle showing the tradition therefore seemed the means to achieve these objectives.
 
This task contradicting the village traditional practices may appear harmless, given that indeed it is the traditional ways that are presented on stage and not water-downed or completely distorted practices. Yet this small detail of formalization in order to be understood by those who lead the world, profoundly changes the name of the game. The point for me here is not to look for any kind of authenticity that might be found at the origin of a tradition. In fact, oral traditions have the capacity to constantly reinvent themselves according to events that take place. It’s simply a question of underlining the tension that exists between on the one hand asserting independence from the colonial power by focusing on autochthone cultures, and on the other hand asserting Guinea’s existence as a new nation on the international scene. Guinea then had to conform to the current formats: to become a nation, to adopt a flag, and to stage its identity in the forms invented by Western modernity.
 
In order to build the narrative of the Guinean nation, the cultural differences that might exist in the country have to be partially erased, and the practices must be detached from the global contexts in which they are embedded. This means inventing artistic acts that are separate from their social, political and cultural implications linked to the everyday life in the villages. People having predetermined social functions must be transformed into professional artists.
 
 

The choice to enter the Ballets Africains

Famoudou Konaté grew up in his village and was soon recognized for his great ability to play the djembe. He comes from a noble family, which determines his particular role in the village society. He describes this situation as follows:

In Hamana villages, all women, all men, and all children know to which group they belong and what their tasks are within the community:

The hörön (“the free men”) are the nobility. They govern. In the past, they decided on war and peace and were themselves great warriors. They regulate all aspects related to agriculture. But ultimately, they are responsible for the whole community in all its matters. (Page 91)

For Konaté, the other casts, the “artisans of society”, are divided into three groups: a) leather workers; b) griots; and c) blacksmiths.
 
Thomas Ott stresses in his introduction to the book that Famoudou Konaté would not have become a professional musician, if he had not been selected to be part of the Ballets Africains created at the time of Guinea’s independence in 1958. This was because members of noble families had to marry on reaching adulthood and were no longer allowed to practice music. Konaté writes:

Anyone called Coulibaly, Keïta or Konaté, as an upper-class member, is in fact not competent to play drums. In my family, he had to stop playing it as soon as he got married. Mamady Keïta and I became professional percussionists only because we were recruited to play in the big State ensembles. (Page 92)

Griots are at the same time historians, storytellers, genealogists, diplomats, counsellors, and musicians whose “working tools are words (language) and sounds (music)” (page 92). For him, in the tradition, the use of musical instruments is reserved to them, but music is not for them an “end in itself, but a means of expression in their multiple social tasks” (page 94).[3] According to Konaté, blacksmiths are the ones who build djembes, and as such “the drummers often come from blacksmith families” (page 92), while griots are most often playing balafon or kora.
 
So here we have the first fundamental contradiction between respect for tradition and access to a certain modernity. Famadou Konaté, having already acquired a reputation as a great djembe player, had to choose between staying in his village and ceasing to play this instrument, or to become part of a world of live spectacle, where objects are created separately from everyday life, to be presented in a limited timeframe to an audience that is a priori “non initiated”. In the village tradition, the status of music remains ambiguous. The caste system predetermines roles, with the griots being obliged to be musicians, but as Konaté states above, music is not for them an “end in itself”, music is always inscribed in a global context. Yet there is no activity (work, ceremonies, festivities) without the very important presence of music. Learning music takes place outside any pedagogical method. There is no obligation to achieve a specified excellence, but reputations create hierarchies, comparisons and preferences. Famoudou’s reputation is that he is the best djembéföla in his village and beyond, but now he has to prove it to be recruited as a soloist in the Ballets Africains competing with all those coming from all parts of the country. The status of music changes when one moves from a highly localized context to the notion of a constituted nation: Konaté is not judged as an African man but strictly speaking as a musician. Saved by Guinea’s independence and the creation of the Ballets Africains, he can continue playing the djembe, his passion in life. Growing up in the tradition in which djembe playing is inscribed enabled him to come first in the competition to enter the Ballets, but through this act he became a professional specialist in the European sense of the term.
 
So, on the one hand, you have a village tradition that tends not to differentiate political and social aspects from religious, cultural and artistic expressions – quite opposite of Western rationalities that strongly specialize various functions and thought domains. On the other hand, the aim is to bring together the best musicians and dancers from this type of tradition on a national level. But Guinea’s vast territory is not culturally homogeneous, which means that it is necessary to create music that takes these differences into account. Even if the Ballets Africains practice of staging and setting music and dance remains completely oral, the reconciliation of differences creates a situation of a music that needs to be fabricated prior to the performance on stage. Famoudou cites the case of Arafan Touré, who was second soloist in the Ballets Africains, originating from Basse-Guinée, and having a completely different rhythmic approach, difficult to reconcile with his own playing (page 88). He also mentions the case of Mamady Keïta in these terms:

My relationship with Mamady Keïta was marked by a great friendship and mutual respect (…). He came from the village of Balandugu, near Siguiri, 150 km from Kouroussa. We both belong to the same Malinke culture, nevertheless there are a few musical and cultural differences between our two regions (Hamana and Wassulu), and neither of us had a perfect knowledge of the other’s culture. (Page 89)

 
 

The Ballets Africains, between Emancipation and Oppression

The second source of ambivalence in Konaté’s life can be found in the ways the Ballets Africains were effectively run, at once a source providing an opening onto the world, an international artistic success, and also a repressive system that tended to reduce the members of the ensemble to an existence of servile executants. The opportunity offered by the Ballets represented an extraordinary privilege for a villager, but the working conditions were sometimes tantamount to an unworthy status as human beings.
 
The chance for Famoudou Konaté to be selected to be part of Ballets Africains goes far beyond the only fact that he could devote himself completely to the art of djembe playing. In the first place, during the 25 years he played with the Ballets Africains, he took great pride in representing to the world the culture of his country with the highest artistic levels of excellence:

As can be imagined, from an artistic point of view, a total dedication to our work and the highest quality of performance were expected from us, musicians and dancers. It was under this law that we had to present ourselves, as we had to bring honor to our country throughout the world. (Page 52)

The Ballets Africains toured the world several times, only few countries were not visited by the ensemble during this period. According to Famoudou, this was an “enormous privilege” for Africans (page 65). It was an opportunity for him to compare different lifestyles and cultural attitudes, especially in relation to the division at the time between the Communist world and the West. It is also the opportunity to face up both to the immense success with audiences extremely interested in discovering world cultures, and to the prejudices and racist attitudes encountered in everyday life.
 
Above all, it was an opportunity for him to learn reading and writing, something that he couldn’t do as a child because there was no school in his village:<:p>

The numerous travels with the Ballets represented for all of us who had practically never left our home villages in Guinea, an enormous broadening of our perspectives. I found it particularly important to learn speaking and reading French, as I’d never been to school. That’s why I was grateful that we were given French courses on our first journey. (Page 97)

This enabled him to keep a rich logbook made up of meaningful reflections and anecdotes. Eventually, this allowed him to write this autobiographical book based on all these notes accumulated through the years.
 
This immense international success, this opening onto the world, this access to education must nevertheless be paid for by the corruption of the Ballets’ direction, and the oppression of a system that severely limits the freedom of its members. Working conditions are often harsh, lodging undignified, and salaries too low for ensuring a normal life, with fines imposed for any infringement of the rules. Relationships between men and women within the ensemble were strictly forbidden, and an internal police force kept a watchful eye on the rooms to enforce this rule.
 
When the group was playing in the presence of President Sékou Touré, everything was going well, but otherwise the repressive system was in full swing, with its endless trail of intrigues. At a certain point, Sékou Touré improved the Ballets‘ artists living conditions by granting them the status of civil servants. But after his death in 1984, the new power neglected artistic policies, and relations within the Ballets deteriorated considerably. It was at this moment that Konaté left this prestigious ensemble.
 
 

Artistic Independence Acquired Thanks to Teaching

Leaving the Ballets was by no means a simple thing to do, but little by little, Famoudou Konaté acquired his artistic independence. Above all, he established regular contacts with German university musicians who came to study with him in his village in Guinea, and who regularly invited him in Germany to give concerts and lead workshops. His contribution during the year 1990-2000 in the development in different countries of the abilities of non-Africans to seriously practice the music of his own culture is very substantial.
 
The idea of teaching djembe playing to adults who didn’t grow up in his tradition, although often educated in conservatories of “classical” European music, is a challenge for him: he has to develop a methodology that both stays within the orality framework and enables students to progress towards technical skills that are not separated from the musical and cultural meanings of instrumental playing.
 
Another challenge is that, in Guinea itself, social structures are in turmoil (urbanization, mining, influence of communication technologies) meaning that the young people tend to lose contact with tradition. Here too, in his concern to maintain alive and transmit his art, its ways of playing and the cultural context in which it evolves, he has to invent efficient methods for teaching in his own village and beyond in Africa.
 
In his approach to teaching djembe, Konaté had to invent methods appropriate to the diversity of the public he addressed, whether Africans or Europeans. He had to invent them from scratch, because the notion of teaching didn’t exist in the village where he grew up: based on established models present in everyday life, each child had to develop his or her own playing without the help or supervision of anyone else. How to reconcile the idea, for those who are not inserted in this cultural world, of instilling principles, and of letting them gradually determine their own playing styles in an autonomous way. He describes the dimension of the problem in the following example:

In 1987, when I arrived in Germany and gave my very first workshops, I had enormous difficulties teaching the phrases of djembe solos. The reason was simple: the solos were not catalogued in my head in a way that would have enabled me to pass them on. The accompaniment phrases on the three lower drums posed far less problems to me. Little by little, I managed to systematize them and to teach them accordingly. What helped me was my experience with European students and their learning difficulties. I am very grateful to them for these exchanges. However, concerning the solos, it’s not sufficient simply to repeat what the master is doing. What you have to achieve is free and autonomous improvisation. (Page 239)

For him, what is at stake is “learning and teaching without pedagogy”, as one of the sub-chapters of his book is entitled. He draws a distinction between teaching music in European conservatories, centered on learning how to read and play notated scores (“certain students cannot play without having notated everything down beforehand”) and the oral character of his music which doesn’t separate the head from the body:

According to my experience, writing down notes is useful if you want to remember later what you’ve learned with the teacher. But in learning situations and in playing music, the head and the body should be entirely free. We Africans are accustomed to using the head and the body together. In the end, everything is recorded in our memory, and we master it through playing. If, instead, we were asked to play reading the notes, it would be for us a mental headache! (Page 236)

To be able to teach in a multicultural context that mixes orality and writing, he has to systematize his own rhythmic practices, while keeping in mind that people must absolutely go beyond the stage of this systematization to better achieve in a global manner the very essence of the music.
 
In this new phase in Konaté’s life, situations of tension between local tradition and globalized modernity again arise. The choices available go beyond a conservative option of maintaining tradition at all costs, or a progressive option which would consist in erasing them. In each case, a tortuous pathway must be traced through effective practices. In the village of his childhood teaching music or instruments didn’t exist, everyone had to find their own way based on stable, everyday conditions that seemed natural. In today’s world to which he is confronted, particularly in order to free himself from the Ballets Africains, teaching becomes a necessity, and learning has to be reinvented to both maintain tradition alive and to make it evolve strongly, within the framework of a silent tension, but in this case a very friendly one, between African and European conceptions.
 
 

Conclusion

It’s rare to find a book written by a practitioner in which all the aspects relevant to various life contexts are addressed in three ways: a) a detailed description of what is at stake in the artistic practices; b) a very elaborated reflection on the meaning of the minutest elements of practice; and c) the account, often humoristic, but also dramatic, of real-life situations.
 
In this way, all the subjects are treated in depth: the history of his family, his childhood, his first steps with playing the djembe, colonial domination, the journey (going on adventure) to visit his brother. The Ballets Africains, the political context of independent Guinea, the tours all over the world, the working conditions in this ensemble. And then, the post 1987 period of artistic and teaching independence in Africa and Europe. In 1996, he became honorary professor at the Berlin University of the Arts.
 
Chapter by chapter, we also gain access to a critical description of his own culture: the social order in the village, the role of music and dance, the festivities, and the more problematic aspects such as excision and the rigid distribution of roles, especially between men and women. There is an important chapter on the “individual and social functions of music” (p.169-223), on instruments and the ways they are built, their techniques, their history and the various contexts in which they are used. The book concludes on a personal retrospective on the experiences he encountered and the reflections they have stimulated over time. He proposes a series of working pathways for the “conservation of African music” and maintaining its oral characteristics. For him, it’s a question of defining in a very universal sense who has the right to participate in this tradition: “music knows neither ‘races’ not colors” (p.239). The impact of modernity on traditions is also discussed, especially concerning the preservation of practices (recordings, videos) and the question of author’s rights. For Konaté, the confrontation between tradition and modernity is “mixed”. He talks about Africa’s economic problems, of traditional and modern medicine, of the evils of intensive tourism, of racism that he experienced in Europe and elsewhere, and of the “ecological living conditions, past and present.”

 


1. Extract from the back cover, Famoudou Konaté, with the collaboration of Thomas Ott, Mémoires d’un musicien africain, Ma vie – mon djembé – ma culture, Paris L’Harmattan, 2022.

2. This book was first published in German in 2021 with the following title: Famoudou Konaté, Mein Leben – meine Djembé – meine Kultur, Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen eines afrikanischen Musikers. Herausgegeben von Thomas Ott (2021 Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG. Mainz, Allemagne).

3. See the interview of Djely Madi Kouyaté in the present edition.

Famoudou Konaté

Access to English translation.

 

Commentaires sur le livre de Famoudou Konaté
Mémoires d’un musicien africain
 
Jean-Charles François
2025

 

Sommaire :

Introduction
La création d’un Ballet national en Guinée.
Le choix de se présenter aux Ballets Africains
Les Ballets Africains entre émancipation et oppression
L’indépendance artistique grâce à l’enseignement
Conclusion
 

Introduction

En 2022, Famoudou Konaté, « grand représentant de la tradition musicale Malinké de la Guinée »[1], a publié un livre tout à fait remarquable, Mémoires d’un musicien africain, Ma vie – mon djembé – ma culture écrit avec la collaboration de Thomas Ott, qui « a été professeur universitaire de pédagogie musicale à Berlin ».
 
Loin d’être une simple autobiographie, il s’agit d’un récit très approfondi des divers problèmes de nature artistique, sociale et politique auxquels a dû se confronter un musicien africain dans la période de 1940 à nos jours : grandir dans un village traditionnel en Guinée, parcourir le monde en tant qu’artiste représentant la Guinée indépendante, apprendre à lire et à écrire à l’âge adulte, devenir professeur en Guinée et en Europe, mener une réflexion approfondie sur sa propre pratique et sur la tradition dans laquelle elle s’inscrit. Famoudou Konaté, dans son livre, nous fait part avec une richesse de détails et d’analyses d’un certain nombre d’aspects de sa propre vie qui couvrent des domaines tels que la pratique musicale, l’ethnomusicologie, l’histoire de l’Afrique, la géopolitique, la sociologie des pratiques artistiques, la lutherie instrumentale, les techniques de jeu sur les instruments, la pédagogie des musiques orales, et pour unifier le tout la présentation d’une riche philosophie de la vie. Pourtant ce n’est pas du tout un livre à prétention « académique », tout le monde peut avoir accès à l’aperçu global de sa pratique, avec en plus de nombreux récits, histoires, légendes, qui illustrent avec humour les informations d’ordre artistique et autobiographique.
 

'Mémoires d’un musicien africain' Famoudou Konaté
 

Dans son introduction au livre, Thomas Ott en explique la genèse. Après avoir appris à lire et à écrire lors des tournées mondiales des Ballets Africains, Konaté a pris l’habitude de rédiger « un grand nombre de notes autobiographiques (…) en français pendant de nombreuses années » (page 15). Le travail de Thomas Ott a consisté à classer ces notes, les traduire en allemand[2] et de les rassembler dans une forme qui fait sens. Il décrit les deux tournants heureux de la vie de Famoudou Konaté :

  1. Tout d’abord sa sélection pour faire partie des Ballets Africains représentant la Guinée, alors que dans la tradition de son village il devait se marier et abandonner sa pratique du djembé.
  2. Et beaucoup plus tard il quitte les Ballets Africains qui était aussi pour lui devenu une organisation trop oppressive qui limitait l’extension de sa posture artistique internationalement reconnue. Il devient alors artiste indépendant, grâce en partie à l’enseignement de sa musique, de sa culture dans son village d’origine et dans les institutions européennes.

Dans chacun des tournants de la vie de Konaté, l’ambivalence qu’on peut rencontrer dans toute pratique se fait jour et le met dans la nécessité de creuser son chemin dans le tissu des contradictions, ce qui le rend capable d’acquérir une hauteur de vue universelle dans la conduite de ses récits multidimensionnels. Les conditions dans lesquelles s’inscrit toute mise en pratique est que tout acte se passe dans l’obscurité au milieu d’éléments qui jouent les uns contre les autres. Il convient comme dans l’improvisation de se tracer un chemin tant bien que mal à partir de ce qu’on a déjà construit, sans la possibilité d’avoir le temps de penser rationnellement. Mais ce tracé n’est pas comme l’écriture où chaque mot pris individuellement tisse une signification globale avec la série qui vient de se lire et celle qui va se lire. Dans les pratiques orales, les contradictions, les complexités sont là bien présentes et il faut en jouer sans penser aux conséquences. Mais au fil des ans on peut prendre des notes réflexives et arriver avec le temps à des vues qui clarifient dans une globalité les aléas des circonstances. Dans ce sens la pratique n’est pas consciemment idéologique, même si les idéologies peuvent bien s’exprimer inconsciemment dans les comportements du corps humain.
 
Thomas Ott nous dit que la musique de Famoudou Konaté a été pour lui « le pont vers l’Afrique en général ». Il précise que :

« Fidèle à l’adage “Qui ne connaît que la musique ne connait rien à la musique”, j’ai rapidement commencé à m’intéresser aux problèmes politiques, sociaux et économiques de l’Afrique » (page 19).

Pour ma part, je dirais que je ne connais pas très bien la musique de Konaté ni les musiques et danses africaines, mais grâce à la lecture de son livre, j’ai une idée beaucoup plus précise dans sa globalité de ce qui entre en jeu dans ces contextes, avec toutes les informations utiles qu’il donne sur les aspects musicaux, artisanaux, politiques, sociaux, économiques et culturels de sa pratique artistique et des liens qu’il est capable de tisser entre tous ces domaines.
 
 

La création d’un Ballet national en Guinée

En 1958, le gouvernement du Général De Gaulle propose aux colonies africaines subsahariennes de la France leur indépendance dans le cadre d’une association intitulée Communauté franco-africaine. Un seul pays, la Guinée, sous l’impulsion de Sékou Touré qui en deviendra le président, refuse par référendum cette association. En deux mois la France retire tout l’appareil administratif et économique, cessant ainsi toute relation.
 
Pour affirmer une complète indépendance, la Guinée est placée devant la nécessité d’être reconnue en tant que nation de par le monde. Il lui faut absolument affirmer son identité culturelle africaine et développer des outils diplomatiques pour la représenter. C’est ainsi que se créent les Ballets Africains (sur le modèle d’ensembles déjà en existence) regroupant les meilleurs artistes de la musique et de la danse du pays. Il s’agit de présenter l’essence d’une nouvelle nation, sa tradition spécifique en dehors des influences extérieures, dans une seule soirée à l’issue de laquelle n’importe quel public va être à même de comprendre de quoi il en retourne. Pour se faire, il semble qu’il n’y ait pas d’autre choix que de se conformer aux lois de la représentation dominante de l’époque, c’est-à-dire celle déterminée par la pensée occidentale à la fois dans les manifestations culturelles et la diplomatie. La mise en spectacle de la tradition semble donc être le moyen de parvenir à ce but.
 
Cette tâche contradictoire par rapport aux pratiques traditionnelles du village peut paraître anodine, étant donné que ce sont bien les manières traditionnelles qui sont présentées sur scène et non des pratiques édulcorées ou complètement déformées. Pourtant ce petit détail de mise en forme en vue d’être compris par ceux qui mènent le monde, change profondément la donne. Il ne s’agit pas ici pour moi de rechercher une quelconque authenticité qui se trouverait à l’origine d’une tradition. En effet, les traditions orales ont bien la capacité de se réinventer constamment au gré des évènements. Il s’agit seulement de souligner la tension existante entre l’affirmation de l’indépendance vis-à-vis de la puissance coloniale, tournée vers les cultures autochtones d’une part, et l’affirmation de l’existence de la nouvelle nation sur la scène internationale d’autre part. La Guinée doit alors se conformer aux formats en vigueur : il faut qu’elle se constitue en nation, qu’elle se dote d’un drapeau et se résoudre à se mettre en scène dans les formes inventées par la modernité occidentale.
 
Pour construire le récit de la nation guinéenne, il faut effacer en partie les différences culturelles qui peuvent exister dans le pays et faire en sorte que les pratiques puissent se détacher des contextes globaux dans lesquelles elles s’inscrivent. Il convient alors d’inventer des actes artistiques qui soient séparés des implications sociales, politiques et culturelles liées à la vie quotidienne des villages. Il faut transformer les personnes ayant des rôles sociaux prédéterminés en artistes professionnels.
 
 

Le choix de se présenter aux Ballets Africains

Famoudou Konaté a grandi dans son village et il est devenu très tôt reconnu pour ses grandes capacités à jouer du djembé. Il est issu d’une famille noble ce qui détermine son rôle dans la société du village auquel il appartient. Il décrit cette situation dans ces termes :

Dans les villages de Hamana, toutes les femmes, tous les hommes et tous les enfants savent à quel groupe ils appartiennent et quelles sont leurs tâches au sein de la communauté :

Les hörön (« hommes libres ») constituent la noblesse. Ils sont les gouvernants. Autrefois, ils décidaient de la guerre et de la paix et étaient eux-mêmes de grands guerriers. Ils règlent tout ce qui est lié à l’agriculture. Mais en fin de compte, ils sont responsables de toute la communauté et de toute ses affaires. (Page 91)

Pour Konaté, les autres castes, « artisans de la société » se divisent en trois groupes : a) les travailleurs du cuir ; b) les griots ; et c) les forgerons.
 
Thomas Ott souligne dans son introduction au livre que Famoudou Konaté ne serait pas devenu un musicien professionnel s’il n’avait pas été sélectionné pour faire partie des Ballets Africains créés au moment de l’indépendance de la Guinée en 1958. En effet les membres de la famille des nobles devaient à l’âge adulte se marier et ne plus pratiquer la musique. Konaté écrit :

Celui qui s’appelle Coulibaly, Keïta ou Konaté, comme membre de la classe supérieure, n’est en fait pas compétent pour jouer du tambour. Dans ma famille, il devait cesser de le faire dès qu’il se mariait. Mamady Keïta et moi sommes devenus des percussionnistes professionnels uniquement parce que nous étions recrutés pour les grands ensembles d’État. (Page 92)

Les griots sont à la fois des historiens, des conteurs, des généalogistes, des diplomates, des conseillers et des musiciens dont « les outils de travail sont les mots (langage) et les sons (musique) » (page 92). Pour lui, dans la tradition l’usage des instruments de musique leur est réservé, mais la musique n’est pas pour eux une « fin en soi, mais un moyen d’expression dans leurs multiples tâches sociales » (page 94)[3]. Selon Konaté, les forgerons fabriquent les djembés, et à ce titre « les joueurs de tambour sont souvent issus des familles de forgerons » (page 92), les griots jouant le plus souvent du balafon ou de la kora.
 
Voici donc une première contradiction fondamentale entre le respect de la tradition et l’accès à une certaine modernité. Famadou Konaté ayant déjà acquis une réputation de grand joueur de djembé, a été placé devant le choix de rester dans son village et de cesser de jouer cet instrument, ou bien de se tourner vers l’univers du spectacle vivant qui crée ses objets de manière séparée pour être présentés dans un temps limité à un public à priori non « initié ». Dans la tradition du village, le statut du domaine de la musique reste ambigu. Le système de caste prédétermine les rôles en mettant sur les griots l’obligation d’être musiciens, mais comme le dit Konaté ci-dessus, la musique n’est pas pour les griots une « fin en soi », la musique s’inscrit toujours dans un contexte global. Pourtant il n’y a pas d’activité (travail, cérémonies ou fêtes) sans la présence très importante de la musique. L’apprentissage de la musique se fait en dehors de toute méthode pédagogique, il n’y a pas d’obligation à atteindre une excellence spécifiée, mais les réputations créent des hiérarchies, des comparaisons et des préférences. Par réputation, Famoudou est considéré comme le meilleur djembéföla dans son village et au-delà, mais maintenant il doit le prouver pour être recruté comme soliste dans les Ballets Africains en entrant en compétition avec tous ceux provenant de toutes les régions du pays. Le statut de la musique change lorsqu’on passe d’un contexte très localisé à la notion de nation constituée : Konaté n’est plus jugé comme homme africain, mais de manière stricte comme musicien. Sauvé par l’indépendance de la Guinée et la création des Ballets Africains, il peut continuer à jouer du djembé, sa passion dans la vie. C’est d’avoir grandi dans la tradition dans laquelle le djembé est inscrit qui lui permet de remporter le concours d’entrée aux Ballets, mais par cet acte il devient un spécialiste professionnel dans le sens européen du terme.
 
On a donc d’une part une tradition villageoise qui tend à ne pas différencier les aspects politiques et sociaux des expressions religieuses, culturelles et artistiques, tout le contraire des rationalités occidentales qui spécialisent fortement les diverses fonctions et domaines de pensée. D’autre part il s’agit de regrouper au niveau national les meilleurs artistes de la musique et de la danse issus de ce type de tradition. Mais la grande étendue du territoire de la Guinée n’est pas culturellement homogène, ce qui nécessite la création d’une musique prenant en compte les différences. Même si la pratique de la mise en scène et mise en musique des Ballets Africains reste complètement orale, la conciliation des différences crée une situation de musique qu’il faut fabriquer au préalable de la prestation scénique. Famoudou cite le cas de Arafan Touré, qui était second soliste dans les Ballets Africains, originaire de Basse-Guinée, et ayant une approche rythmique complètement différente, difficile à concilier avec son propre jeu (page 88). Il cite aussi le cas de Mamady Keïta en ces termes :

Ma relation avec Mamady Keïta a été marquée par une grande affection et un respect mutuel (…). Il était originaire du village de Balandugu, près de Siguiri, à 150 km de Kouroussa. Nous appartenons à la même culture Malinké, néanmoins il y a quelques différences musicales et culturelles entre nos deux régions (Hamana et Wassulu), et nous n’avions ni l’un ni l’autre une connaissance parfaite de la culture de l’autre. (Page 89)

 
 

Les Ballets Africains entre émancipation et oppression

La deuxième source d’ambivalence dans la vie de Konaté se trouve dans le fonctionnement même des Ballets Africains, à la fois source d’une ouverture sur le monde, d’un succès artistique international et d’un système répressif qui réduit les membres de l’ensemble à une existence d’exécutants serviles. L’opportunité des Ballets représente une chance inouïe pour un villageois, mais les conditions dans lesquelles se passent le travail ont parfois des équivalences avec un statut indigne d’êtres humains.
 
La chance que représente la sélection de Famoudou Konaté pour faire partie des Ballets Africains va pour lui bien au-delà du seul fait qu’il peut se consacrer pleinement à l’art du djembé. En premier lieu, pendant les 25 ans où il joue avec les Ballets Africains, il y a chez lui une grande fierté de représenter au monde la culture de son pays avec les plus hautes exigences artistiques :

Comme on pouvait s’en douter, d’un point de vue artistique, on exigeait de nous, musiciens, danseurs, danseuses, un dévouement total à notre travail et la plus haute qualité d’exécution. C’est sous cette loi que nous nous sommes présentés, car nous devions faire honneur à notre pays dans le monde entier. (Page 52)

Les Ballets Africains font plusieurs fois le tour du monde, il y a peu de contrées qui n’ont pas reçu pendant cette période la visite de cet ensemble. D’après Famoudou, il s’agit là d’un « énorme privilège » pour des Africains (page 65). C’est l’occasion pour lui de faire des comparaisons sur les différents modes de vie et attitudes culturelles, notamment par rapport au partage à l’époque entre le monde communiste et l’occident. Il s’agit aussi de se confronter à la fois au succès immense auprès de publics fortement intéressés par la découverte des cultures du monde entier, et aussi aux préjugés et attitudes racistes rencontrées dans la vie quotidienne.
 
C’est surtout l’occasion pour lui d’apprendre à lire et écrire, ce qu’il n’avait pu faire dans son enfance à cause de l’absence d’école dans son village :<:P>

Les nombreux voyages avec les Ballets ont représenté pour nous tous qui n’avaient pratiquement jamais quitté nos villages d’origine en Guinée, un énorme élargissement de nos horizons. Je trouvais particulièrement important d’apprendre à parler et à lire le français, car je n’étais jamais allé à l’école. Le manque d’éducation est un lourd fardeau. C’est pourquoi j’étais reconnaissant que l’on nous donne des cours de français dès notre premier voyage. (Page 97)

C’est ce qui lui permet de tenir un journal de bord riche de réflexions et d’anecdotes significatives. Éventuellement cela lui permet d’écrire le livre autobiographique basé sur les notes accumulées sur des années.
 
Cet immense succès international, cette ouverture sur le monde, cet accès à l’éducation doit pourtant se payer par la corruption de la direction des Ballets, et l’oppression d’un système qui limite fortement la liberté de ses membres. Les conditions de travail sont souvent très dures, les logements peu dignes, les salaires trop bas pour une vie normale, avec des mises à l’amende pour tout manquement au règlement. Les relations au sein de l’ensemble entre les hommes et les femmes sont strictement interdites et une police interne surveille les chambres pour faire respecter cette règle.
 
Quand les choses se passent en présence du président Sékou Touré, tout va bien, mais sinon le système répressif bat son plein, avec son cortège d’intrigues. À un certain moment, Sékou Touré est celui qui améliore les conditions de vie en octroyant aux artistes des Ballets le statut de fonctionnaires. Mais après sa mort en 1984, le nouveau pouvoir néglige les politiques artistiques et les rapports au sein des Ballets se détériorent considérablement. C’est à ce moment-là que Konaté a quitté cet ensemble prestigieux.
 
 


 

L’indépendance artistique grâce à l’enseignement

Quitter les Ballets n’a pas été une mince affaire, mais petit à petit Famoudou Konaté acquiert son indépendance artistique. Surtout il établit des contacts très suivis avec des musiciens et universitaires allemands qui viennent le voir en Guinée, dans son village, et qui l’invitent régulièrement en Allemagne pour donner des concerts et animer des ateliers. Il contribue grandement dans les années 1990-2000 à développer dans différents pays les capacités des non-africains à pratiquer sérieusement les musiques de sa propre culture.
 
L’idée d’avoir à enseigner le jeu sur le djembé à des personnes adultes n’ayant pas grandi dans sa tradition, bien que souvent formées dans les conservatoires de la musique « classique » européenne, est pour lui un défi : il doit développer une méthodologie qui à la fois doit rester dans les cadres de l’oralité et permettre aux étudiants/étudiantes de progresser vers des compétences techniques non séparées des significations musicales et culturelles du jeu instrumental.
 
Autre défi, en Guinée même, les structures sociales en plein bouleversement (urbanisation, mines, influence des technologies de communication) signifient que les jeunes tendent à perdre contact avec la tradition. Là aussi, dans un souci de maintenir et transmettre son art, ses manières de jouer et le contexte culturel dans lequel il évolue, il doit inventer des méthodes adéquates pour enseigner dans le cadre de son village et au-delà dans l’Afrique.
 
Dans sa manière d’envisager l’enseignement du djembé, Konaté doit inventer des méthodes appropriées à la diversité des publics auxquels il s’adresse, qu’ils soient africains ou européens. Il doit les inventer de toute pièce, car la notion d’enseignement n’existait pas dans le village où il a grandi : à partir de modèles établis se manifestant au quotidien, chaque enfant devait au village développer son propre jeu sans l’aide ni la supervision de qui que ce soit. Comment, envers les personnes qui ne sont pas insérées dans ce monde culturel, concilier l’idée d’instiller des principes et celle de les laisser petit à petit déterminer de manière autonome leurs propres styles de jeu. Il formule la dimension du problème en décrivant l’exemple suivant :

En 1987, quand je suis arrivé en Allemagne et ai donné mes tous premiers stages, j’avais d’énormes difficultés à enseigner les phrases de solo du djembé. La raison était simple : les solos n’étaient pas catalogués dans ma tête d’une manière qui m’aurait permis de les transmettre. Les phrases d’accompagnement des trois tambours basse et second djembé me posaient beaucoup moins de problèmes. Petit à petit, je réussissais de mieux en mieux à les systématiser et à les enseigner en conséquence. Ce qui m’a aidé, c’est mon expérience avec les élèves européens et leurs difficultés d’apprentissage. Je leur suis très reconnaissant pour ces échanges. Cependant, en ce qui concerne les solos, il ne suffit pas de simplement répéter ce que fait le maître. Ce que vous devez atteindre, c’est l’improvisation libre et autonome. (Page 239)

Pour lui, il s’agit « d’apprendre et d’enseigner sans pédagogie », comme s’intitule un sous-chapitre de son livre. Il fait la différence entre l’enseignement de la musique en Europe centré sur l’apprentissage de la lecture et l’écriture du solfège (« certains ne savent pas jouer sans avoir tout noté auparavant ») et le caractère oral de sa musique qui ne sépare pas la tête du corps :

Selon mon expérience, l’écriture de notes est utile si l’on veut se rappeler plus tard ce qu’on a appris avec son professeur. Mais en situation d’apprentissage et en jouant de la musique, la tête et le corps devraient être entièrement libres. Nous autres africains avons l’habitude d’utiliser la tête avec le corps ensemble. A la fin, tout est enregistré dans notre mémoire et nous le maîtrisons en jouant. Si au lieu de cela, on nous demandait de jouer d’après des notes, ce serait un casse-tête pour nous ! (Page 236)

Pour pouvoir enseigner dans un contexte multiculturel qui mélange écriture et oralité, il doit systématiser ses propres pratiques rythmiques, tout en restant conscient qu’il convient pour les personnes qui apprennent qu’elles doivent absolument dépasser le stade de cette systématisation pour mieux parvenir d’une manière globale à l’essence même de la musique.
 
Dans cette nouvelle phase de la vie de Konaté, on retrouve de nouveau les situations de tension entre tradition locale et modernité mondialisée. Les choix qui se présentent vont au-delà d’une option conservatrice de traditions à maintenir coûte que coûte ou d’une option progressiste qui consisterait à les effacer. Il faut à chaque fois se tracer un chemin tortueux dans des pratiques effectives. Dans le village de son enfance l’enseignement de la musique, des instruments, n’existe pas, chacun, chacune, doit trouver sa voie à partir de données stables, quotidiennes, qui semblent naturelles. Dans le monde auquel il se confronte, notamment pour se libérer des Ballets Africains, l’enseignement devient une nécessité et l’apprentissage de la musique doit être réinventé pour à la fois maintenir la tradition vivante et la faire fortement évoluer, dans le cadre d’une tension silencieuse mais dans ce cas très amicale entre les conceptions africaines et européennes.
 
 

Conclusion

Il est rare de trouver un ouvrage écrit par un praticien de la musique dans lequel tous les aspects pertinents à des contextes de vie diversifiés sont traités de trois manières : a) une description détaillée de ce qui entre en jeu dans les pratiques artistiques ; b) une réflexion très élaborée sur la signification des moindres éléments de pratique ; et c) le récit souvent humoristique, mais aussi dramatique, de situations réelles d’existence.
 
De cette manière, tous les sujets sont traités en profondeur : l’histoire de sa famille, son enfance, ses premiers pas vers le jeu du djembé, la domination coloniale, le voyage (aller à l’aventure) chez son frère, Les Ballets Africains, le contexte politique de la Guinée indépendante, les tournées dans le monde entier, les conditions de travail dans cet ensemble. Puis la période après 1987 d’indépendance artistique et d’enseignement Afrique et en Europe : en 1996 il devient professeur honoraire à l’Université des Arts de Berlin.
 
Au fil des chapitres, on a aussi accès à une description critique de sa propre culture : l’ordre social dans le village, la place de la musique et de la danse, les fêtes, et les aspects plus problématiques, par exemple celui de l’excision et celui de la distribution rigide des rôles, notamment entre les hommes et les femmes. Il y a un chapitre important sur les « fonctions individuelles et sociales de la musique » (p. 169-223), sur les instruments, leurs constructions, leurs techniques, leur histoire et les divers contextes dans lesquels ils sont utilisés. L’ouvrage se termine sur une rétrospective personnelle sur les expériences qu’il a vécues et les réflexions qu’elles ont pu susciter au fil du temps. Il propose des pistes de travail en vue de la « conservation de la musique africaine » et le maintien de son caractère d’oralité. Il s’agit pour lui de définir dans un sens très universel qui a le droit de pratiquer cette tradition : « la musique ne connaît ni “races” ni couleurs » (p. 239). L’impact de la modernité sur les traditions est aussi abordé, notamment vis-à-vis de la préservation des pratiques (enregistrements, vidéos) et de la question des droits d’auteurs. Pour Konaté le bilan de la confrontation entre tradition et modernité est « mitigé » (p. 249). Il parle alors des problèmes économiques de l’Afrique, de la médecine traditionnelle et moderne, des méfaits du tourisme intensif, du racisme qu’il a subi en Europe et ailleurs, des « conditions de vie et d’écologie, hier et aujourd’hui » (p. 257).

 


1. Extrait de la quatrième de couverture, Famoudou Konaté, avec la collaboration de Thomas Ott, Mémoires d’un musicien africain, Ma vie – mon djembé – ma culture, Paris L’Harmattan, 2022.

2. Ce livre a tout d’abord paru en allemand en 2021 sous le titre : Famoudou Konaté, Mein Leben – meine Djembé – meine Kultur, Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen eines afrikanischen Musikers. Herausgegeben von Thomas Ott (2021 Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG. Mainz, Allemagne).

3. Voir l’interview de Djely Madi Kouyaté dans la présente édition.

Autre Musique, English

Access to French original text.

 
 

Situation of Collective Practice Aiming at Opening a Meaningful Debate:

A Workshop on Graphic Scores within the “Autre Musique” Seminar,
“Scores #3 « Providing-Prescribing”, 2018.
 
Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff
2019-2025

 

Translation from French
by Jean-Charles François

 
 

Summary :

Introduction
Description of the Dispositif in Place at the Start of the Workshop
Conduct of the Workshop
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 4
Phase 5
Conclusion
Bibiography
 
 

Introduction

This article gives an account of a workshop on “graphic scores”, which the two authors led in 2018. This account will be accompanied by critical commentaries. The intention here, through this workshop and this article, is to propose an alternative to the normative format of professional meetings in the world of academic research. The aim is to go beyond the simple juxtaposition (and often superimposition) of research presentations, in favor of a more direct exchange issued from collective practices enabling the opening to more substantial debates.
 
In the realm of artistic research, the professional meetings are today, for many reasons, completely formatted in formulas in ways that favor juxtaposed (or parallel) communication of research projects, at the expense of a real collective work resulting in debates on fundamental issues. The normative format that has slowly become instituted within the framework of these meetings (conferences, seminars) allows all the chosen persons to present their work on the basis of an equal speaking time. To achieve this, a 20-minute presentation time has been imposed in conferences, followed by a 10-minute period for questions from the public. When the number of participants exceeds the time capacity of the entire conference, parallel sessions are organized. This subdivision of time and space tends to favor autonomous groups with particular interests and therefore avoids any confrontation between forms of thought considered as belonging to categorizations that are foreign to each other. Or on the contrary, parallel sessions may involve the description of similar approaches that would have great interest in confronting each other.
 
The main reason for organizing international conferences in this kind of standard format relates to the usual process for evaluating university research in Anglo-Saxon universities and applied all over the world: “publish or perish”. Participation in prestigious conferences is recognized as a proof of the value of a research project, it gives access, in the best cases, to publications in various journals. Consequently, the personal participation in a conference is conditional on a formal presentation of one’s own research. The currency of exchange has become the line in the academic curriculum vitae.
 
The time devoted at the end of each presentation to give a voice to the people present in the room, tends to be limited to questions rather than the formulation of a debate, not only because of the lack of time, but also because of the idea that research should be evaluated in terms of proven results. If what is presented is true, it should not be the object of a discussion. The object of discussion might concern the proof itself in the context of power struggles, or throwing some light on what remains unclear, but it doesn’t concern the construction of a debate between the specificity of a research project and its inscription in the complexity of the world. The presentation of problematic issues concerning the subject at hand in a conference is left to the prestigious personalities invited, delivered from the height of their long experience, in the initial phase of the “keynote address”. In fact, debates take place during the numerous breaks, meals, at coffee machines, and other non-formal activities, most often in very small groups with common affinities. The elements of debate do not emerge under these conditions as democratic expression that would go deeper than just the informative equal-time round-table.
 
The format of academic conferences that was just described can be viewed as a practice juxtaposing all kinds of highly relevant information and ensuring interactions between invited people. The research presentations themselves describe pertinent practical and theoretical aspects and at the same time open the way to effective encounters. However, in these times of difficulties concerning transportation due to the climatic crisis and pandemics, you might wonder whether these kinds of information exchanges might not be limited to videoconferences. If face-to-face encounters become more and more difficult to organize, then the rare opportunities to meet effectively should open the way to other types of activity, meaning that the focus should be placed on sharing problems that we have to face, in forms of practices that are much more collective and unique compared to the day-to-day routines of each research entity.
 
At first sight, the idea of a workshop seems appropriate to this program, as it’s linked to the necessity for the members taking part to be effectively present in order to create, through a specific collective practice, something that makes sense and from which theoretical elements can be manipulated. But the usual workshop formulas (as well as that of “masterclasses”) is in principle focused on a practice that is unknown to the participants and which is instilled by those responsible for its animation. Alternatively, you can envision workshop formats in which the agency is only there to allow the emergence of a common practice, and at the same time the emergence of debates around this practice. In this kind of set-up, there is an initial proposition with clear instructions to collectively enter into a practice, then to allow an alternance between: doing-discussing-inventing new rules, and so on. It’s precisely what we attempted to achieve during the example presented in this article.
 
The workshop in question took place on March 14, 2018, during the 3rd study day, “seminar-workshop” organized by Frédéric Mathevet and Gérard Pelé, within the sound art and experimental music research group L’Autre musique (Institute ACTE–UMR 8218–Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University–CNRS–Ministry of Culture), under the title of Partition #3 “Donner-ordonner” (Score #3 “Providing-Prescribing” or “Giving-Ordering”). Three study days were organized in the Paris area, during the year 2017-18 with the following intention:

These sessions question the relevance of the notion of “score” in relation to new sound and musical practices and, more broadly, open up to all forms of contemporary creation.

Lautremusique.net – Laboratoire lignes de recherche. Partition #3.

The study days resulted in a publication: L’Autre Musique Revue #5 (2020).
 
It’s in this context that we ran a two-hour workshop, with about twenty participants working in the domains of dance, music and artistic research.
 

Description of the Dispositif in Place at the Start of the Workshop

The starting situation of the workshop necessitated a particular approach, in order to arrive as quickly as possible at a) a collective practice, b) one that could be continued on the basis of effective participation of the people present, and c) one that could result in debates, bringing out affinities, differences and antagonisms. To achieve these objectives, the initial situation had to meet several requirements:

  1. The ability to describe orally the situation in a few words that would be immediately understood by all.
  2. The situation should define a practice that everyone can do immediately, with no special skills required.
  3. To develop a practice that would be at the center of the seminar’s subject matter – in this case the practice of graphic scores, from the point of view of both their elaboration and their interpretation.
  4. To develop a practice open to questions and problematics, and not as something imposed from the outset as a definitive solution.

Here is the description of the initial situation:

In a single simultaneous movement, to individually produce an action with three coherent elements:

  • A drawing with a pencil on a sheet of paper.
  • A gesture that includes the graphic production; a gesture that can start outside the drawing, include the drawing, then continue after the drawing.
  • A sound sequence produced by the voice or the mouth (the vocal tract).

The action should not exceed three to five seconds. The action must be repeatable in exactly the same configurations.
 
This action, which combines visual art, music and dance, should be individually thought of in a coherent manner as a “signature”. In a way, it defines the singular personality of the person who produces it, it should enable any outsiders to identify an individual.
 
Each member present reflects for a short time to prepare his or her “signature”. The protagonists are in a circle around a very large table. As soon as everybody is ready, each signature is presented one after another several times. Then an improvisation takes place, with the rule of only being able to reproduce your own signature at a chosen time (and any number of times). The idea of improvisation here is limited the placement of one’s own signature in time. After a while, it’s possible to begin introducing variations on one’s own signature.

 

Conduct of the Workshop

The workshop takes place in a seminar room with a large table at its center, with chairs to sit around it, with not much space to circulate or make large body movements.
 
The workshop starts with an introduction to the PaaLabRes collective, to which the two co-authors are members, and with the general objective of the workshop, which is not, as in a usual workshop, to present an original practice, but is completely turned towards the possibility of a debate on graphic scores emerging from the setting-up of a collective practice. The idea is to first be in a practical situation, and then to discuss it.
 
The following description is based on the audio recording of the workshop. A few moments are described without the presence of the verbatim. The spoken words have been transcribed as such, and slightly modified when oral expression is not clear or sometimes partly inaudible.[1]

 

Phase 1

0′:
The initial situation of the “signatures” is orally explained. Among those present, there is some difficulty in understanding that the aim is to realize only a single action with three simultaneous tasks and not three elements separately produced.

P:
“Is this something that’s addressed to others?”
The answer is yes, the signature must also be able to be transmitted.

P:
“Will others be able to reproduce it?”
For the time being it’s not the case, but eventually it should be possible to do so.

Time is given to allow participants to experiment with their signatures. This initial phase lasted 15 minutes (including the general presentation of the workshop).

 

Phase 2

15′:
The signatures are compared. Each signature is produced twice in a row, and two table rounds took place.

21′:
An improvisation takes place. The participants are only allowed to produce exactly their own signature. Not anyone else’s. The improvisation is only about placing signatures in time. Participants have to try to place their signature at moments when it can be heard and when it can contribute in some way to what’s happening.

P:
“Can we repeat the signature in a continuous way?”
The answer is yes, but it’s also possible to produce only one fragment of it.

P:
“Does it mean that we are only allowed to do it once?”
No, you can do it as many times as you wish. Each time the signature must be recognizable.

P:
“Do we have to continue doing the gestures?”
Yes, and also the drawing on paper.

P:
“Should we keep the same rhythm, the same tempo?”
Yes, in this first improvisation, after that we’ll see.

23′:
Improvisation 1. Duration: 2’ 41”.

 

 

 

26′ 30”:
Second improvisation proposed by the workshop leaders: now you can make some variations around your own signature, either by changing elements (faster, slower, louder, softer, etc.), or by enriching, ornamenting with other elements.

27′ 30”:
Improvisation 2. Duration: 2’ 25”.

 

 

The various drawings produced during the first two improvisations are shown to everyone. It can be observed that these are indeed graphic scores.
 
A first discussion is proposed.

Pz:
“We can continue to experiment. By exchanging our drawings.”

P:
“By making the sounds of others?”

Pz:
« “We keep one part of our signature, but we play someone else’s score. (…) You have to take at least one part of your signature…”

P:
“You mean with the sound?”

Pz:
“From the other’s signature, you can reinterpret your own signature.”

P:
“You take your own sound, not the sound of the other?”

Pz:
“In fact, you use this score to play your own signature. [Brouhaha] You can change your movement. We’ll draw on top of it.”

P:
I do not draw on her score, I take another piece of paper, because you have to redraw.”

Here are examples of signatures:[2]

Signature 1
Signature 1
 

 

Signature 2
Signature 2

Signature 3
Signature 3
 

 

Signature 4
Signature 4

Commentary 1[3]
After the two improvisations with rules determined by the workshop leaders, the only tangible element that you have at your disposal are the drawings on paper. The sounds have gone up in smoke and the gestures can be partly identified in the drawings they produced but are also vague elements that linger in memory. In these conditions, the object-paper immediately assumes the form of score, as a privileged site of what survives in a stable manner over time. The written score on paper is the locus that determines, in the modernist conception, the presence of an author. Can one find the same attitude in relation to sounds and gestures? It’s not at all certain. At the onset of exchanges of feelings, after the improvisations, one can see that there exists in the workshop a sense of respect for other’s properties: you should not draw on top of the score of another person. The score is sacred, therefore you are not permitted to rewrite over it. The sounds and gestures are not in this cultural circle deemed in the same degree of intellectual property than what constitutes the immutability of what is written on a score.
 
In improvisation, There isn’t any prohibition on reproducing exactly what another person is creating, even if it’s impossible to do so with absolute precision . Of course, there is an affirmation of a personal identity in the exchanges during an improvisation, but not to the point of refusing the influences exerted by other participants. You are not in a situation where the exact reproduction of a sound object or a gesture leads to the cultural death of the model. This recalls an anecdote of a trombonist having the project of learning the didjeridoo in an isolated Aboriginal community during the 1970s. The ethnologists told him never to reproduce what he heard of the didjeridoo players’ productions, as it was the equivalent of stealing their soul and taking away their reason for living. In our own practices, we are a long way from that idea.
 
The notion of the graphic score’s autonomy in relation to any kind of interpretation, linked to the separation between composer and performer, resulted in assuming historically a dual function: a) the graphic score can be considered as an object susceptible to result in a musical performance (or other); or b) it can be exposed in a museum or art gallery as an object belonging to the visual arts. Of course, it could also be both at the same time.

Pz:
“In fact, it’s as if you had a way of interpreting it with your own vocabulary, you perform with your own vocabulary. You just have one syllable, a sound or a gesture, but here you have a graphic score, and it will bring you somewhere else, because it’s not the same [as actual sound or gesture].”

Each piece of paper with a drawing, now becoming a score, is given to the next person on the right.

37′:
Improvisation 3 based on Pz ‘s proposal. Duration 3’.

 

Phase 3

40′:
In the previous discussion preceding Improvisation 3, a participant had proposed another situation:

Pa:
“Replay the improvisation [just performed] and you have to make the score of the totality [of what you hear]. This is to test the reversibility [hearing to drawing, drawing to hearing]. The [recording of Improvisation 2] will be replayed, and you’ll have to make a score according to what you hear. To replay what we just performed and to draw according to what we hear.”

[Through this process, you can test the reversibility of the signatures: can you identify gestures and drawings in relation to what we hear?]

Pa:
“Draw the score corresponding to the sounds you hear. Inevitably all the sounds at the same time.”

P:
“We draw what we hear, in fact?”

P:
“We draw what we want.”

Pa:
“What you hear.”

P:
We are not obliged to use the codes of what we did?”

Pa:
“No. It’s one of the first courses that I’ve given here in 1979, it was called “sensorial approach”, you had to put your hand in a bag, and you had to draw tactilely…”

46’50”:
The recording of Improvisation is replayed and at the same time new graphic productions are made in relation to what is heard.

48’50”:
The new drawings circulate to be seen by everybody. Looking at the graphics gives way to numerous commentaries.

P:
“Can we keep some of them?”

P:
“Who did this one? The star! Oh-la-la!”

Pa:
“The proof is there, I think…”

P:
“The language…”

P:
“Clearly…”

P:
“Why should things be this way…?”

P:
“Are they not?”

The process of reading the scores continues with various comments.

P:
“Here we can really see a beginning and an ending.”

The question of representation of temporal unfolding is raised versus a global representation without beginning and end.

Pn:
« “I didn’t think in terms of timelines,[4] in fact. And it even struck me to see things that had a beginning and an ending… Ah! they do exist!”

JCF:
“It’s the deformation of musicians!”

Pn:
“So, rightly, it was for me a question, because paper was naturally seen as a barrier… So, a spatialized writing… But OK, I had started out on something…”

P:
“You were stuck, why?”

Pn:
“The timeline. In fact, these are processes that maybe could be isolated. To be able to circulate from one to the other, to be able to go backwards.”

Pa:
“There are not many representations that are free of this timeline.”

P:
“Sound is time, after all.”

Pa:
« “Nevertheless, you can find some examples. I’m thinking of the work by T., in which there’s no timeline.”

JCF:
“But that’s not the case with the first improvisation. Experiencing time is completely different. When you improvise and make some gesture, it’s like playing an instrument, there’s no timeline. In fact, the time is now. Therefore, it’s in the reversibility that you find a very different situation.”

 

Commentary 2
 
Two questions emerged:
      a) You can keep a score, it’s a tangible object of memory.
      b) The choice between a representation based on a timeline or a global representation outside time.
 
On the one hand, graphic representations tend to be considered as objects with a definitive character, which can be preserved if they are judged worthy of preservation. Graphic productions tend to be seen as fixed representations of sounds that are realized over time. The dominant model is that of musical scores, which in Western perspectives constitute the privileged object for identifying a work. And with a time representation that goes from left to right, as in written texts. Under these conditions, any drawing, any image can be considered as a graphic score, on condition that the codes and modes of reading are precisely defined.
 
On the other hand, an issue arises of a representation based on time unfolding, versus a global representation of all the various elements in play, without beginning or end. There is a recognition that musicians in particular are formatted by the linear representation of sounds in time. There is the observation that the great majority of graphic scores is based on a timeline representation. There are few exceptions that show global forms of representation (as with topographies or cosmologies presenting simultaneously a diversity of elements).
 
The issue is whether the conception of time represented on a score remains the same in the case of improvised music, sometimes thought of as a present that is eternally renewed with no concerns for what just happened and for what’s about to emerge. The question of the reversibility of things depends directly on the presence of a linear visual organization. If only the present moment counts, nothing can be reversed or inverted.

 

P:
“Is it possible to try – because my brain is formatted – is it possible to do it again, for those who thought in time to be out of time, and for those who thought out of time to be in time? Because I am really formatted, then it interests me to do it without linear thinking.”

P:
“Yes, the same.” [Everyone speaks at the same time]

JCF:
“The possibility for those who wish to do it with their eyes closed.”

P:
“With the left hand.”

58′:
The recording of Improvisation 3 is replayed to repeat the same exercise with the new rules.

1h. 00′:
The new drawings just produced are passed around again.

1h. 03′:
Discussion opens.

P:
“When I was linear, it really stressed me out. I felt tense, stuck in the line, whereas the first time it was much easier.”

P:
“It wasn’t tense for me, but I found that it produced something different. [The first time corresponded] to how I felt, but it was completely unreadable. Linear representation, it corresponds to something, it’s easier to transmit.”

P:
“So, I said to myself that when it’s not linear, I’m going to listen globally, and I realized that I couldn’t listen globally. As soon as I heard something, I wanted to draw it and I couldn’t be in the totality of the thing, I was drawn in by the details, somewhere there was still some linearity, it’s thus stayed linear.”

P :
“I think that when it’s not linear, you are more inclined to easily accept the fact that in any case your interpretation will be partial and subjective, you mix elements, it’s more pleasant, you let yourself be taken along.”

P:
“So, I worked in this way, in high-low, and that opened up the space inside. It was really very pleasant to listen and to draw according to pitch.”

JCF:
“I found that you could really be focused on the gesture of what you heard, rather than identifying the sounds. In any case, what strikes me in particular is that in the initial signature, there is really a coherence between the visual, the gesture and the sound, that you find in part in the temporal presentation, but only in part, but that you no longer find at all in the nonlinear representation… You lose the identification of the signatures.”

Pa:
“For example the duration of the sequence: what we’ve just done, what we’ve just heard, we write (describe?) how much time it lasts.”
 
[Everyone speaks at the same time]

How do we perceive the duration of the recording that has just been played?

P:
“Does it have to be really precise?”
 
[Brouhaha]

P:
“You’ll be able to verify. We don’t care about checking the time, the question is to know who’s the most accurate. You have to write it down, otherwise we’ll be influencing each other.”

P:
“Let’s write it down.”

On a piece of paper, all participants write the estimated duration of the recording of Improvisation 3. Results: 3’, 3’30”, 1’30” [laughs], 2’41”, 2’27”, 4’, 1’40”,2’… The answer was: 2’.

NS:
“The problem is that we all pretty much agree that we think that it starts on the first sound and ends with [he produces a vocal sound]. Except that, in fact, when you said: “What do you hear?”, I’d already started [before listening to the recording of Improvisation 3] . A situation of variation… Then, when do you decide that it starts and when you decide that it ends? You can read a sheet linearly like that as well as like that [paper noises as he rotates the sheets in all possible ways]. Then, after that, you find this one in the street, it’s not at all obvious that it should be read this way or that way. Then, where do you start reading? It’s not at all obvious. In a concert, it’s fairly clear, the light goes down, there’s the thing, here, yes there it is, ah that’s it, it’s starting. And on stage, people relax, ah, it’s finished. There is a real thing about the implicity of the end.

 

Phase 4

1h. 12′:
One participant proposed making sounds based on the score (signature) of another person.
 
The proposition is adopted with the following precisions: groups of three are formed to realize in common a single score.

1h. 17′:
Performance of group 1. Duration: 30”.

 

 

NS:
“What are the instructions that you gave yourselves, how did you work at it?”

P(g1):
“We divided the score in four parts. Here you can see that we divided this part [he shows]. 30” there… We agreed on the attacks…”

P(g1):
“Attacks and birds.”

1h. 19′:
Group 2 performance. Duration: 40”. One of the participants recites a text, the other ones produce various noises.

 

 

P(g2):
“At first, it’s crap, because we are three and there are approximately four lines. We decided that the fourth line would be a sort of reservoir… (…)”

P(g2):
[In English:] “Sometimes I used the score, sometimes I improvised…”

P(g2):
“So, each of us had a line and a playing mode, and then from time to time we’d pick up on the fourth line, therefore we were improvising…”

P:
“Oh! yeah, organized!”

P:
“You agreed to improvise!”

P:
“I only do that. To each her or his own way!” [Laughs]

 

Commentary 3
 
Apart from the ironic tone, which suggests that you should not take spoken words too seriously, we can see that there are difficulties in considering the possibility of middle paths between composition, meaning here that things are fixed prior to the performance, and improvisation, which must remain free of any preparation. This way of thinking may be due to the tendency to consider on-stage the performance as absolute, erasing all the various mediations necessary for it to materialize. Whether the performance is a composition or an improvisation makes no difference, the underhand “tricks” must remain backstage, otherwise the mystery of the production presented on stage could suffer. Improvisation in particular, because it implies an absence of preparation of precise events, is often considered not to have resulted from previous events, such as education of the artists, their technical exercising, the elaboration of their own sound or dance style and repertoire of possibilities, their career path, the interactions they may have had in the past with their colleagues, or even the organization of rehearsals.

 

1h. 21′:
Group 3 performance. Duration: 1’ 04“.

 

 

P(g3a):
“We didn’t use any translation. We took the thing as it was.”

JCF:
“Without discussions?”

P(g3a):
“We simplified things, we just said: we have three categories of registers, three types, and then we just read directly.”

1h. 24′:
Group 4 performance. Duration: 1’10”.

 

 

P(g4):
“Well, our procedure was just to say that we’ll all start there.” [Laughs]

P(g4):
“I said to myself that it looks like spoken words. In fact, it really was like the writing of a language.”

P(g4):
“Yes, we thought that was the way to do this.”

P(g4):
“I thought of a radio show on Radio Campus Paris…”

P(g4):
“Still, I found this very pleasant to do. I wanted to continue.”

P:
“But you took a score that wasn’t yours.”

P(g4):
“We did it on purpose. We chose not to take our own score despite the instruction.”

P(g4):
“I didn’t see that. I thought it was better for all three of us to be neutral.”

Px:
[Participant outside group 4, the one whose score was used]: “It disturbed me a little, because I had a very precise idea…”

P(g4):
“Therefore it was your score”.

Px:
“Yeah, I didn’t think that you could do things so well. It’s terrible. Because of you I’ll presenting my projects all over the place, and making monumental flops…”

P(g4):
“It’s not just the score, there are also the performers!”

 

Commentary 4
 
Here, you are right at the core of the difficulties surrounding graphic scores. Is their principal link in terms of creativity relevant to composition on written scores or to the interpretation of graphisms? Are they really the occasion of negotiation between graphists and interpreters on reading codes or on the limits of their respective roles? If the ball is completely in the camp of the interpretation of scores, left to the world of the instrumentalists, vocalists, sound artists, and dancers (etc.), then any result is acceptable, including any aberrant reading of graphics (for example play “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…”). Graphics don’t count, if you cannot link eventual interpretations to visual signs. In this context, Nelson Goodman (1968, p.188) analyzed a graphic score by John Cage (as part of the Concert for piano and orchestra, 1957-59)) as in no way constituting a notational system, which according to him, should guarantee the ability to recognize a musical work each time it’s being played in relation to the signs present in the original score.
 
Historically, the composers who were pioneers of graphic scores (notably Earl Brown and Morton Feldman) were not satisfied with the sound results, when their compositions lacked any particular codes that would have obliged the performers to respect them. This happened at the very moment when the performers were not yet able to really understand what was at stake, to really perceive what was expected of them. Later, Cornelius Cardew, while he was himself a performer of his own music and collaborating with many performing musicians, developed a graphic score, Treatise (1963-67) resembling an anthology of graphic signs, an utopian version of a complete freedom left to performers (see paalabres.org, second edition, Treatise region). According to John Tilbury, who was one of the important performers of Treatise, the instrumentalist is faced with a double bind between respecting the codification of signs and improvising by ignoring the written signs. The performer, faced with an absence of codes given by the composer, is in a situation on the one hand of the impossibility of being pedantic by assigning for each sound on the score a singular sound (this for 193 pages!) and on the other hand of a moral impossibility to ignore totally the content of the score. Such was the situation of Eddie Prevost who, being completely immersed in the sounds of the music that was unfolding, started to improvise taking less and less account of the visual aspects contained in the score (Tilbury 2008; p. 247).

 

1h. 27′:
Group 5 performance (by the two workshop leaders). Duration: 1’23”

JCF:
“The idea was to go across the score, to have only whispering, to go across and have a silence before and after.”

NS:
“In fact, we decided to do that, but we’d completely forgotten that here was written a 4’ 15”. So, we had to do that. And after that, I said to myself: well, no… it doesn’t work, then why not make a gesture.”

P:
“But the story of the silence is that you perhaps didn’t read correctly, it was in 4/4 beats.”

 

Commentary 5
 
Thanks to this narration, the question of the ownership of what has just been performed is raised. You can detail the “dissemination of author’s right” (Citton, 2014) associated with the latest performances.
 
Let’s go through the workshop performance’s narrations in reverse order. If you tried to tell things chronologically, how would you determine the beginning? And why at this moment, and not a little earlier?
 
Here is the account going back in time:
      • [Phase 4:] 3 (or 2) people collectively invented to play starting with…
      • [Phase 3:] … signs on paper written by a different person, starting from…
      • [Phase 2:] … a recording produced by the entire group, starting from…
      • … a proposition from one person to experiment a second time, after…
      • … discussions and sharing of everyone’s realizations …
      • … of a first proposal from another person to represent on paper what
        the group just performed, starting from…
      • [Phase 1:] … an initial protocol of two people, the workshop leaders, starting from…
      • … trial-and-error (with plural multiples) in different situations of this same
        idea of protocol…
 
If you try to list all the instances in which we’ve used this protocol of signatures, it exceeds a dozen situations, and by far the fifty or so people involved in various ways in such experiments. All the proposals expressed have influenced us in determining the content of the workshop of this day of March 2018. It even happened that one of us two was not present to the experiments that took place, but had only a report on them: that’s another form of influence…
 
This already long journey insists on actions that can be categorized as artistic. But you should also consider, for example: the size and form of the room (organization, architecture), the way the furniture is laid out (according to what occurred beforehand and what will happen after in this room), the circumstances of the lunch break, the style of paper and pens, felt pens, pencils available, the life fragments that each person brings into the room, etc.
 
After this little narrative-panorama leading to these performances, how to answer the question: to whom do they belong? If you consider this question as interesting, it is certainly extremely complex. But you can also consider this narrative-panorama (and so many others) as blowing up the notion of property rights. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865)[5] long ago showed already in detail “How property is impossible” (in 10 propositions, his chapter IV, 2009).

 

Phase 5

1h. 30′:
Discussion opens.

NS:
“In the questions raised at the beginning, I noted the issue of notation, we haven’t stopped taking notes, we’ve got lots of well-filled papers. I raided my aunt for her old sheets of paper from the 1980’s. I said to myself: I’m going to take that and see what to do with it, but in the end, they all have been used! So, we have shuffled a lot of ideas, in fact it was notation in relation to creation, to interpretation, and so on. Maybe we can go back over what each of us experienced this moment on these things, and then there’s the idea of notation in the “Providing, Prescribing” context, which was the theme of this seminar. Then, how do you understand the idea of “Providing, Prescribing” in relation to what we did, what each of you have experienced what we have done. Perhaps, we could go round the table, without any obligation to speak. We can dialogue together.

P:
“I’m completely convinced by what we’ve done. My impression is that I don’t have enough hindsight to be able to put the right words on what happened. In fact, many very different things happened. In any case, it was a great moment in terms of time and exchanges. For what is “prescribed”, we all had to sort out what we had, or at least to be obliged to make some choices. We all had to go through the graphics, especially during the last part. In any case, in terms of form, presentation and method, I find it quite convincing. Or it would need perhaps more time for being able to clarify all that just happened.”

P:
“I pass!”

P:
“It’s really cool. The question I have is: how could you go from this kind of experimentation to a creation in the sense of a spectacle, of a public performance? It’s extremely interesting to do, to practice, and I suppose that it gives a lot of matter to experiment with… so that each person can propose things. Then, around this table, there are a number of us who are already used to graphic scores and to their interpretation. I’m wondering how you go from there to turn it into an artwork. And also, about what Frédéric [Mathevet] said about what was good about graphic scores, that it could enable us to take a step aside when improvising and to invent new things. In fact, I wonder if it really allows the invention of new things. Here, in spite of everything, whatever happens, you always end up in the same kind of things…”

 

Commentary 6
 
Once again, you must face the ambiguity of meaning in the context of the use of graphic scores, between the presence of a score, which in the Western modernist perspective constitutes an “artwork”, and the multitude of possible interpretations, which underlines their opening up to experimentation and improvisation. For the participant who has just spoken, experimentation should lead to a definitive artwork before it can be presented on stage. But at the same time, for him, the experimentation in itself seems an attractive activity.
 
The first question that arises in this context is about the “new”: the value of an artwork is not in the repetition of what already exists, in the plagiarism of scores already written, but in bringing in new elements. In the case of experimentation and improvisation, the concept of the new might be more modest: you are in the presence of micro-variations around already existing elements that are inscribed in a context of immediate collective production. This context is susceptible to generating moments that are not so much conducive to the creation of new perspectives as the creation of constantly renewed situations. So what are the values specifically linked to graphic scores interpretation? Do they not open up a space of freedom, away from the qualitative evaluation considerations of recognized historical artworks and the requirements in play at the level of their performance? In what way are the performances realized during the workshop less valuable than a lot of performances on stage?
 
The second question concerns the hegemony of the public stage, what we call here “live spectacle”, a highly marked inheritance from what has been developed since the 19th Century. Not only does the existence of a score only make sense if it’s performed on stage, before a public that has access to its publication, but in the case of improvisation, the only intangible element is the performance “on stage”, in presence and in the present, as the only space in which improvising makes sense. But in the case of improvisation, there’s some worry concerning the feeling that the audience isn’t included in the process, that situations should be developed where everyone present is being part of the collective production. Then, the pleasure of experimentation as such can be viewed as an alternative to the stage and to the elaboration of an “artwork”, on condition of finding ways to include the public as an active member in the process, and to break out of the logic that separates professionals from amateurs.

 

Jean-Charles François explains the context in which the initial situation was elaborated:

  
“Simply, one of the contexts in which we did this, was on the occasion of an encounter between musicians and dancers (2015)17 at the Ramdam near Lyon). The idea of this encounter was to develop common materials between music and dance. Hence that idea of gestures and sounds linked together. Then, one day, a visual artist joined the group. The question was: what could we do to bring him into the game? And so, we developed this situation. In fact, the project was really focused on improvisation, that is developing situations in which common materials could be elaborated to be eventually used in improvisation, over the long term. So, it was done in that context, rather than with the idea of creating a graphic work, to make a piece around graphic situation.”

One participant asks for clarification on the situations developed in this context:

JCF:
“We created a lot of protocols for entering into an improvisation in which dancers and musicians had to do something in common. Then, based on the elaborated materials, we asked them to develop freely in improvisation. We did this over 5 weekends and a certain number of situations were created. The idea of signatures was the first one we used, because it’s a good way to get acquainted with each other, to get to know the people present.”

P:
“Did it produce a lot of variety? Very different things? To what extent? Gestures, sounds?”

NS:
“Today, in the situation of gestures-graphics-sounds signatures, gesture hasn’t been developed much. But at the Ramdam, the dancers helped us to do all these things. Even starting with a table, by the end everybody was playing on the chairs around the table, we were moving around. And what’s interesting, is that they helped us to do things with sounds too, in the sense that dance intelligence is in fact already multiple. I tried to do it, but I was limited, attempting to swing, making big gestures, all the while trying to relax a little. And also the question of the specialization between dance and music: when you work on this, precisely with these dancers, the distinction between dancers and musicians is something that doesn’t hold very long, even if there is a path towards music and a path towards dance. Actually, in real life, it doesn’t hold for that long, and all the protocols we did amount to questioning these things on a regular basis.”
P:
And compared to what I said this morning [she had given a paper presentation as part of the seminar], for me, it’s the gesture, with the sound you’re talking about. Even Laban really works with sound. When I am speaking, I can notate it in terms of effort, of its pushing: ‘p… p…’; throwing, spitting, hitting, all these are vocal gestures in fact. Then, the story of the pens (and so on), it’s gesture with, even if it’s producing some sound, you can see that there’s a kind of congruence between gestures and sounds. And it’s true that I have the tendency to speak only about gestures. At the same time, it’s great to bring out the sound from the gesture. Here, I loved your last gesture, because it has a sound, a real sound. With the recording, we didn’t see it, but we heard it, in fact it’s a real sound. I think it’s good to talk at the same time about sound and gesture, also because somehow you dissect to produce two materials, which… In the end it’s not indigestible.”

P:
“So, there’s also at stake something of the order of performance. For me performance is something physical, which isn’t played like an actor plays, but which is simply a matter of putting the body into play, and this is a common state that can be found in all kinds of performance. You can have in the sound here, on the effort, you can have a gesture, that on stories, on the abilities of what you can do on a sort of production, such as a movement of the mouth, of the tongue, you produce sound…”

P:
“It makes me think of the difficulties, when working on sound with choreographers, visual artists, people who aren’t musicians, of how to communicate with others. It makes me think of working with a choreographer who said: ‘I want a fresh sound’. In fact, what he meant by fresh sound is not at all what the other is doing. So, by using either the gesture or the sound, you end up with very different images of what a sound is, what a gesture is, and then, all that allows communication between artists that are different. You understand things in completely different ways.”

P:
“I went through something similar with some architects, they were talking about a Riclès [a peppermint spirit] image: Riclès, it’s fresh!”

P:
“Chewing gum! What was really interesting for me was something I’d already practiced: to notate, then translate it again, take it again, replay it, all that… But with dance you have many scores like that, where frankly the choreographer comes up with his or her own scores. And then you look at them, and you don’t understand anything. It’s the same today, you don’t understand anything, no matter what it remains abstruse. But for me there, I thought it was a good thing to be able to appropriate a text… Because with the scores of the choreographers, you don’t dare to do it, I don’t dare. Yes, all of us work with scores, but to do anything you want with scores is very interesting. In this case, it interested me to think: ‘yes, of course, it’s unreadable, I don’t know what it is, but I’m doing it’.”

 

Commentary 7
 
Here, you have an important element linked to graphic scores: they allow you to “do” something, to access a “getting into action”. People in the habit of working from written, visual elements, are often at a loss when it comes to improvising, which means doing without what constitutes the basis on which they function. The score is merely the pretext (text before “the text”) for doing something, putting the emphasis on the “doing something”. The score is the means to get into action, in overcoming the fear resulting from its absence. Once this fear is mastered, once the action is effective, the graphic score can be thrown away or ignored (see the Group 2 above), as it somehow has lost its importance in relation to the action it prompted. Whether the score is “unreadable” is of no importance with regards to the realization of a “doing” that fully assumes all the meaning.
 
On this issue, it should be noted that graphic scores very often take on their full meaning when it comes to learning improvisation practice. As a pedagogical tool, they provide a convenient transition between the habits of sight-reading scores and doing without any written support in improvisation. As in the case of “sound painting” or gestural conducting of improvisation, this type of teaching practice tends not to liberate those who get into improvisation from the hegemony of the visual over the sonic. The principal difficulty lies not in the pathway from traditionally notated score to graphic score, but with what will take place afterwards, if the aim is to access a situation of oral/aural communication that places the essential emphasis on listening and making sounds (and/or gestures) in improvisation. This applies to the musical realm and might be very different in the dance domain.

P:
“You can allow yourself to interpret without the pressure of the author, to be detached from the issue of the author. Therefore, this could even be done with choreographers. Certainly, we don’t allow ourselves to do that, but it’s something that you should be able to seize, and also in a certain way, if it’s drawn in this way, it should allow you to seize it afterwards. It all depends on the approach taken. If this is transmitted, somehow, you’ll be able to seize it.”

P:
“I don’t know, it’s also designed to create art works.”

 

Commentary 8
 
Once again the necessity to create an “artwork” comes back, in order to be able to present something professionally acceptable to an audience. To achieve this, you need to create situations that guarantee the development of practices that are inaccessible to amateurs. Experimentation in collective workshops can be strongly encouraged provided that at a given moment a creative demiurge (term that can be declined in the feminine) will seriously take over by selecting the most interesting moments of the experimentation to produce an artistic object. Those who took part in the experimentation process now play the role of little obedient soldiers.
 
In the professional world, there’s a lingering tendency to sacralize the one who assumes full artistic responsibility for a collective performance. In the context of this present workshop, it is said concerning this issue, how “allowing yourself to interpret without the pressure of the author” is a delicious transgression, but that cannot be done in the framework of a professional work resulting in a presentation on stage. However, the impression of being completely integrated into the creation process persists, and that’s what can be written in the performance program notice.
 
These rather ironic comments having been written, then, you can also take seriously the following proposal: can a given practice reach the status of an achieved work of art while respecting the rules of equality and of democracy within a collective, in a co-construction of the final result? Can an experimental process be developed over a long term with a continuity between experimental situations and public presentations? To work in such a context, any determined “method” (of a compositional nature) will not fit. It will be necessary to continually vary the modes of interaction according to the work’s progress, as was particularly the case during the present workshop over a very short time span. The supporting tools cannot be limited to a single situation, as in the following examples: improvisation, writing scores, using audio or video support, images, narratives, charts, defining protocols, and so on. The diverse supports can be summoned along the way according to the needs of the collective. Without forgetting to include in the process all the “domestic’ elements linked to the artistic work itself: cooking, housework, children, administrative aspects, relationships with institutions, organization of the space, scheduling, raising funds, etc. Another essential element has to be taken into consideration: it will take much longer for a collective to achieve a satisfactory result, than for a composer or a choreographer working on their own on exclusive plans written down in advance. But complete achievement will undoubtedly remain unattainable, and so will emerge as the salient element of an approach which, as in the case of improvisation, will eternally restart over again and again.

P:
“If it cannot be interpreted, if you’re given something that cannot be interpreted in some way …”

P:
“That’s in this respect that a score is not a gift, it’s not meant to give something.”

P:
“In fact what is given is that moment when, together, in a group, you learn to build your own signs. We’ve determined ourselves our own instructions for use, and thus we’ve built collectively together a reading defined with the people present.”

Pe:
“After all, these are not only signs. We don’t know what a sign is, but according to the things mentioned by Tim Ingold, there wasn’t necessarily something of the order of the sign, there was something practical, which proceeded from movement. You don’t play with the sign, but you replay it, well, you go over it again…”

P:
“… you translate…”

Pe:
“… you have taken the same pathway, then…”

P:
“… it’s a pretext to…”

Pe:
“… a point of entry. And also in relation to what you were saying, about this idea that it could not be interpreted and all that. This being so, there are scores that are virtually unplayable, but when you look at them, they put you in a certain universe. Perhaps, you will not be able to transform them into sound, it’ll remain a purely visual thing, but if you look in detail, you’ll see lots of scores, you’ll be able to imagine things, and after that you’ll be able to play it, it will become worthwhile to play it. Already – in front of the details – you say to yourself, this is a music that gives you something. You can also imagine that this music is a drawing. The things by Cage, where the margin for interpretation…”

JCF:
During the 1950-60s, we lived through something like this, that is, a large number of composers producing graphic scores, and they were also very frustrated by the results, because, for example, the performers tended to produce clichés, as nothing was prescribed. A certain frustration could be also found with the performers, because they found themselves in a sort of middle ground, in which you had both the imposition of graphics, but a non-imposition over its interpretation: the performers had to start with a given data that they didn’t choose. It was both imposed, and you had to invent everything. This was the time when performers of contemporary music turned more to improvisation, that is, to completely taking hold of things without the help of a composer. What’s interesting today is the renewed great interest for graphic scores, which has reappeared in recent years – it never disappeared in fact – but maybe in a different context.”

Pg:
“The term ‘graphic score’ certainly refers to something precise. For me, for example, my scores represent real graphic preoccupations. Besides, I don’t use any score-editing software, I use graphic design software. For example, I take a blank page, and create something graphic, and sometimes I make choices according to a grammar principle, but above all I make a graphic choice so that the eye is satisfied, so as to find an equilibrium, a dynamic, and so on. For me, it’s a highly coded graphic score.”

JCF:
“There’s a book from the 1970s by architect Lawrence, RSVP Cycles (1970), I don’t know if you are familiar with it?”

Pg:
“We’ve talked about it…”

JCF:
“Your approach reminds me of this.”

P:
“I really appreciated this day. With your methodology, you said that we had to physically recognize – or so I didn’t quite understand – we had to recognize each other, I don’t know what the intention behind it was.”

JCF:
“The primary intention was that we didn’t know each other and it’s a means to…”

P:
“… present ourselves.”

P:
“The signature, in a more physical way…”

JCF:
“Yes that’s it, to get to know each other in a non-verbal way, but well… it was just a beginning…”

P:
“I never did that before. I would like to do it in relation to the experience of walking. And to discuss, to select the sound, what sounds to keep, what sounds will be transmitted. To choose sounds, to be attracted to sounds. In working together, we harmonize things. But in what I’ve experienced, I cannot transcribe all the sounds at once, I have to make choices…”

 

2h. 00′:
Frédéric Mathevet, organizer: “We take a 15-minute pause. Then, we’ll start again at 4:30 pm, we have the day until 7:00. That’s going to imprint itself in our heads. For the round table.”

[End of recording and workshop]
 

Conclusion

Within the space of two hours, it was possible to develop real practical situations, already familiar for the people present at the workshop, provoking animated discussions. These discussions focused at the same time on the immediate modalities of the practical situations, on the invention of variations around these situations, and on a debate on the aesthetics and ethics that these practices evoked on the spot. From this debate emerged all the major aspects of the problematics linked to the use of graphic scores:

  1. The interpretation of visual objects in dance and music domains, the relationships between ‘creators” (composition, choreography, stage direction, ensemble conducting) and “performers”.
  2. The question of intellectual property of graphic scores
  3. The multiple functions of graphic scores, between artistic production and specific tools within a more general process.
  4. Experimental situations in relation to professional performances on stage.
  5. The meandering nature of experimental situations in relation to the precise elaboration of a definitive “artwork”.
  6. The body presence, providing dual access to dance movements and sound production, enabling to establish meaningful relationships between dance and music in relation to a visual object assimilated to the field of visual arts.

It seems obvious that the fleeting expressions during the discussions could not imply an in-depth analysis of the concepts addressed, nor an immediate awareness of their meaning on the part of everyone present. That’s why it was necessary to take up what was said during the workshop in a series of our own “commentaries”. Interpreting what people said helps us to think but is by no means a way of analyzing or explaining what those persons think or do. The aim of opening a debate arising from a common practice and from the particular history of each participant has been completely achieved. You cannot predict what this first collective approach might have produced if the workshop had been extended over two or three days, but we’re in the presence of a fairly promising beginning.
 
Obviously, all the questions pertaining to graphic scores could not be tackled during the workshop, the debates have not exhausted the issues.
 
In conclusion, the practical set-up that we’ve just described seems to be a credible alternative to be developed during professional meetings linked to research (notably artistic). The juxtaposition of ideas, research reports, and various communications can be done through teleconferences (synchronic) and other digital tools (asynchronic). As international face-to-face gatherings increasingly become a rare occurrence due to climatic and pandemic evolutions, the invention of alternative situations where effective encounters around practices and the debate based on elements developed in common take place, becomes a very important condition of our artistic and intellectual survival.
 

 


1. In this text P= workshop participant. When someone takes the floor several times in a very short time, the identification is P+a letter (Pz for example). The only persons that are identifies by their names are the two workshop leaders: JCF=Jean-Charles François, NS=Nicolas Sidoroff.

2. It should be noted that the papers on which the workshop participants produced their signatures have been lost. The examples given are taken from a similar situation in Budapest in January 2023.

3. The exchanges during the workshop between moments of practice allow to explicit a certain number of elements connected with the situation, and a second phase is necessary to carry further the ideas that are expressed. It’s the function of the commentaries in frame, written after the fact by the two authors.

4. See Tim Ingold (2007, 2011) on the notion of “lines”. As it happens, Tim Ingold was invited to present a paper in the seminar, in the session immediately preceding our workshop.

5. “Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) was a French anarchist, socialist, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist philosophy and is considered by many to be the ‘father of anarchism’.”(wikipedia)

 


 

Bibliography

L’Autre Musique revue, #5 Partitions, 2020. See L’Autre Musique.
 
Cage, John (1957-58). Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Editions Peters, London, New York.
 
Cardew, Cornelius (1963-67). Treatise. The Gallery Upstairs Press, Buffalo, N. Y. 1967.
 
Citton, Yves. (2014). /Pour une écologie de l’attention/. Paris : Éd. du Seuil, coll. La couleur des idées.
 
Goodman, Nelson (1968). Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976.
 
Halprin, Lawrence (1970) The RSVP cycles: creative processes in the human environment, G. Braziller, 1970.
 
Ingold, Tim (2007). Lines, A Brief History. Routlege.
 
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (2009).
 
Tilbury, John (2008). Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981), A life Unfinished. Matching Tye, near Harlow, Essex: Copula.

The Metronome Episode

Access to French original text.

 
 

The Metronome Episode
Karine Hahn

Extract from the Part III of her doctoral thesis
“The (Re)sonant Practices in the Dieulefit Territory, Drôme:
Another Way for Making Music”

 

Translation from French
and General introduction by
Jean-Charles François

 
 

Sommaire :

Part I: General Introduction
Part II: The Metronome Episode

Taking a metronome out during a rehearsal, is it an accident?
The off-beat uses of this heteronomous tool
The agency of the metronome
Internal Time and External Time
The Situation of Rhythmic Work Confronted to the Sculpture of a “Soft Metronome”

Part III: Reaching Agreement, in and through Musical Practices, within a Territory

Metronome Gap Made Possible
Coordinating and Adjusting to Create a Common Ground in the Dieulefit Surroundings
A choice of observation of actions that are situated, but taken in a temporal density

Conclusion

Bibliography

 
 

General Introduction

In October 2023, Karine Hahn brilliantly defended her doctoral thesis in sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Science Sociale, on “Les pratiques (ré)sonnantes du territoire de Dieulefit, Drôme: une autre manière de faire la musique” [“(Re)sonating Practices on the Dieulefit (Drôme) Territory: Another Way of Making Music“.] Karine Hahn is a harpist, sociologist, Director of the “Formation à l’Enseignement » at the Lyon CNSMD, and a member of PaaLabRes collective since its foundation. In the perspectives of this 4th Edition, Karine’s thesis represents a particularly important text for its meticulous investigation of everyday musical practices in a specific environment, and their critical analysis. Our intention is to publish large extracts of the thesis in this 4th Edition in serial form.
 
As a first installment in this process, we are publishing here an extract from the third part of the thesis: “La mise en accord des musiciens avec leur territoire : construire en commun, une expressivité démocratique“ [“Tuning musicians to their territory: building in common, a democratic expressivity”], and more precisely “the Metronome Episode”, a significant moment when one of the ensemble’s leading members proposes the use of this tool to find a solution to the problems of rhythmic collective accuracy.
 
Karine Hahn’s thesis is focused on the history and current practices at Dieulefit’s music school, the CAEM [Carrefour d’Animation d’Expression Musicale], in existence since 1978, and its inscription in the geopolitical context of the town of Dieulefit, a high-place of resistance, and its surroundings.
 
In her general introduction, Karine describes the Caem in this way:

This music school, founded in 1978 in the small town of Dieulefit, in the Drôme department, by parents with the wish to “to welcome everyone who wants to come to make music”, was presided at its foundation by Josiane Guyon. (p.2)

The Caem displays a) a commitment for civic engagement based on an awareness of social and cultural inequalities; b) a determination to share without exclusion; c) an involvement of all partners in the everyday life of the music school; d) an absence of normativity, and the idea of a constant invention of practices. For Karine “what’s intended is (…): to provide a space, instruments, and teaching, to make accessible for all a practice that you have developed yourself” (p. 3).
 
As part of her research, Karine Hahn decided to join in 2013 one of Caem’s ensembles, the Tapacymbal fanfare [Tapacymbal: phonetically “do you have a cymbal”], “playing flugelhorn for two years, then the small tuba.” The Tapacymbal fanfare is one of around twenty ensembles within the CAEM, part of the music school’s emphasis on “the extremely strong development of collective practices” (p. 108), and an affirmed link between music teaching/learning and the various existing ensembles. Initially Tapacymbal was “a collective workshop for citizen animation” (p. 151), then evolved into a more autonomous status as the “Fanfare Dieulefitoise issue du Caem” [“Dieulefit Fanfare issued from Caem”]. Karine describes its functioning in the following manner:

In Tapacymbal, certain characteristics of a fanfare are clearly present – the importance given to a repertoire implicitly inherited from the “orphéon”[1] coupled with the development of a festive, even carnivalesque dimension. But the musical elaboration is done with other strong characteristics, some shared with other Caem ensembles and pedagogical periods: the presence of conductor is forbidden who might assume an authoritarian role; the importance for all to speak up, both musically and verbally; the handling of musical information by participants; the continual reactivation in new discussions of choices previously made; a focus on rhythmic elements. (p.152)

To introduce the third part of her thesis, Karine proposes paying attention to the description of “musical moments” in which a way of making sound is collectively fabricated:

The ways of doing things reveal a musicians’ ability to tune into and with their territory, with modalities and according to criteria that are unique to them. The question of the rhythmic setting up offers a particularly dense means of questioning the relationship between the individuation and the collective. Moreover, these musicians are committed to making differences possible by circumscribing them, through their ways of doing things, to something that can take place in their functioning, a form of revendication (in the sense of claim, Laugier, 2004) of their common practice. More generally, the translation, and adjustment operations, the spaces for debates and the circulation of the different musical components create the foundation of a committed musical theory, which creates in the Dieulefit surroundings the conditions for a democratic form of expressivity. (p.42)

The section of the thesis entitled “Metronome Episode” which we publish below, is a particularly interesting example of tensions in the realm of practice between a) multiple levels of ability that exist in a given ensemble that need to be combined; b) a relationship to available tools that varies a lot among members of an ensemble; c) very diverse representations of music in its everyday practice by a group. On this last point, the most obvious tension analyzed by Karine Hahn can be found in the reference music education institutions dominated by “classical” music and the amateur practices more open to a variety of aesthetics that meet the expectations of those who participate in it. Karine, in her simultaneous role deliberately divided between critical investigation of the Tapacymbal fanfare practices and her committed participation in this ensemble, becomes herself one of the people to be observed and analyzed. Her own conception of musical practices (and its application in the case of metronome use) is thus only one of the possible representations within an ensemble in which each person expresses a slightly different point of view.
 
The object-metronome makes a drastic intrusion in the practice of a group that usually resists rather vehemently any external authoritarian imposition. Its sudden appearance triggers a cluster of contradictory elements, which will be positively resolved in solutions that don’t quite correspond to institutionalized norms. The metronome episode is for Karine a particularly significant moment of the encounter between a theory embodied in an object and its more or less effective influence on the practical solutions it is supposed to incarnate.
 
 

Part II: “The Metronome Episode”
Karine Hahn

The scene took place during one of the rehearsals of the Tapacymbal fanfare, in the old college hall, in March 2017. Tapacymbal was working on the rhythmic setting of Sydney Bechet’s Egyptian, in an arrangement proposed by Christian, the band’s clarinet and soprano saxophone player. To put together this piece represents for the group a certain challenge, especially at the level of its rhythmic setting. For a while these rhythmic issues occupied the essential part of the rehearsals. However, for some time then, no new materials or ideas came to me to enrich my analysis, which seems to me to indicate a stability of these ingredients and a saturation of the terrain of my field research. I had already noted that the rhythmic complexity, or the setting of polyrhythms were not impeding either the assertion of musical discourse or the ensemble cohesion. The plurality of the relationships to pulsation and the various attempts to reach a common pulsation had already definitively emerged during the different rehearsals and performances – whether as part of the fanfare’s daily practices, or in other Caem activities, such as the project with Miss Liddl.
 
But during this rehearsal on the evening of Thursday March 9, after several attempts at playing, “rien ne va plus”. And if this assessment is first expressed in these terms by Vincent, taken on by Helen on snare drum and then by several other musicians, it was also for me, at that moment, that “nothing’s going right”: Vincent, the rehearsal’s referent saxophonist, takes out his portable phone with a downloaded free application of a metronome, announcing by this gesture that a working session with this substitute metronome will take place. And, as we will not be able to hear the sound of this metronome while playing, he plugs it on the bass amp present in the room, after setting it on a table, so that the loudspeaker will be high enough that the musicians would not fail to hear it.
 
I’m bewildered by this imposition of an object that I considered representative of a music world against which the actors involved in the Dieulefit musical practices seemed to have taken a stand, and therefore suddenly seemed to me to call into question the whole theoretical construct in the process of being stabilized, stemming from my field research analyses. What I considered initially as an “accident” forced me to move once more my gaze, to pursue the inquiry starting with this “metronome” object, to realize that the use of this tool had not necessarily the same significance in Dieulefit, as the one assumed by me. As this “metronome episode” unfolds in front of me, as I observe the musicians with whom I’m experimenting how to play together not reacting as I’d expected while elaborating this piece of music, their common ground, I have to build up a new way of distancing myself once more as a musician-teacher. It requires a form of reflexivity on academic approaches embedded in me, sharpening in a new way my ethnographic concerns. And, once this distancing becomes effective, the “metronome episode” might no longer be one as such, adding a temporal density that makes its use no longer an issue of usage, but of valuation. The analysis proposed here follows the meandering path of my conceptions.

 

Taking a metronome out during a rehearsal, is it an accident?

Taking out a metronome, even before being used, is an act. It is preceded by Vincent’s declaration that “nothing’s going right”, confirmed and relayed by other musicians, verbally or showing signs of exasperation. In summoning the tool, by taking it out of his pocket, Vincent conveys the fact that the group isn’t playing rhythmically together (or not enough). After having experimented with several working modalities, he expresses the need for outside aid – here, a technological accessory. This “metronome scene” is both an event and, taken in its temporal density, an “episode” of the Dieulefit rhythmic issues.
 
The lack of any negative reactions to this proposal, apart from a few sighs and two or three negative expletives [Oh! no…], in an ensemble accustomed to expressing its opinions almost in continuity with the notes that are being played, underlines the fact that the proposal is approved. Vincent’s initiative is even accompanied by:

Wait a minute, we’ll not hear it… take the amp, there…
Yes, you’re right… we’ll put it on the table, to hear it better… Does anyone have a cable?
Wait, there, yes, I think there is one in the cupboard.

Here’s a “metronome” application set up on a portable phone, connected to a bass amp: three objects – the phone, the metronome, the bass amp – that refer to different functionalities, uses, and representations. The use of the phone probably changes the representation of the metronome that some or the others have – you can consider, without too much fear of extrapolation, that its characteristic as a familiar and personal object decreases both its authoritarian and school-related dimensions. But this interpretation of mine at the time was not confirmed by what the actors had to say: in ensuing discussions, they always made reference to “the metronome”.
 
What’s more, the use of the object metronome was associated here to another object on which it is connected, the bass guitar amplifier, that has a different and multiple intentionality. In the fanfare rehearsal room, this amp is used in rehearsals to amplify the bass in popular music groups and in the “bœuf” [jazz jam session] workshop. So, there are also representations in the mind of the fanfare’s musicians that are linked to this use, especially on the side of freedom and creativity, that can counterbalance an authoritarian representation of the metronome. Here too, however, this interpretation refers above all to my own need to minimize the normative dimension of the metronome, both in its use and in the interactions occurring in the situation, so that I can understand how it might fit in.
 
The metronome object, to keep the focus on this object in the mentioned tryptic, confronts you with a bundle of intersecting intentionalities. On the one hand, to what extent the use of the tool, in its primarily school meaning, differs from the way it was initially thought – that is to give to the performers a reference for pulse duration in relation to indications of expressive intents through the tempo, corresponding to the wish of the romantic composer for the performer to be as close as possible to his or her intention (Barbuscia, 2021).[2]. On the other hand, the strong representations linked to the metronome, and the relationships the users have or haven’t to this tool, differ with each of the musicians in presence – which means that they find themselves in different relationships to each other with this object. As for my own relationship to the metronome, as a professional musician observing the situation, while participating in it as an amateur tubist, the metronome is like a “repository of constraint in the world”.[3]
 

 

The off-beat uses of this heteronomous tool

The affordance theories (Gibson 1979), by proposing to closely observe what comes from the environment when an agent undertakes an action, enable us to take into consideration the different relationships to an object that various people have in order to envision the potential meanings they might invest. In the environment in which I evolve professionally on a daily basis, the use of the metronome is for me foremost an imposition external to the playing context, that is necessarily normative. As a support object par excellence for primarily a pedagogical practice, the metronome corresponds to a propaedeutic conception of musical teaching. Extremely normative and prescriptive, it’s difficult to escape it.
 
In addition, the metronome is more than just a working tool, it carries certain values stemming from the context in which it appears. While the regular division of time is a culturally recent phenomenon[4], in music, the metronome instigates, as early as 1815, an equal relationship in musical time, which presupposes that you can divide it in a regular manner, creating the “illusion of objectivity in music” (Barbuscia, 2012, p.54). The use of the metronome soon imposed itself. “Promoted by composers as the only efficient ‘remedy’[5] to a default that the musical art had never been able to obviate, the metronome passed, without any difficulty or intermediary phase, from an accessory making a few happy to the indispensable object of any musical practice” (Ibid., p.58). This is consistent with a very strong rationalization of practices, notably towards republican equality – the revolutionary project of the Paris Conservatoire (Hondré, 2002). Equal beats organize the music. The metronome is then the egalitarian instrument par excellence: it is the physical proclamation of political equality. At the same time, it posits a relation to values: you must be with the metronome, assimilating the rhythmically normative performance to a moral issue. Aurélie Barbuscia also underlines the dimension of control conveyed by the instrument (Barbuscia, 2012, p. 63),[6] developing the idea that transgression can be found among the professionals (Ibid., p.67), as a mark of distinction, while amateurs and beginners must remain within the respect of a norm.
 
While my relationship to this tool is necessarily built with this background,[7] the other musicians in Tapacymbal don’t belong to the same environment, or not exclusively. They potentially refer to other kinds of metronome use, some of them considering it as a simple tool. Of course, the tool, necessarily normative because it is institutional, prescribes a certain use. The action aimed by its use is indeed, in all the different cases, to work towards achieving a common rhythm. But the way in which the actors use it, precisely in the choosing when to produce their sound in relation to the proposed beat, doesn’t necessarily fabricate the same meaning from one ensemble of musicians to another. While globally the use is the same, its application differs, and the valuation is not the same.
 
The percussionists here consider the metronome as a propaedeutic object, a tool on which to rely, but less for themselves than for others. Jean-Louis, on the bass drum, often mentions the fact that he must “play the role of a metronome”, similar to the measuring stick[8] that this new tool partially replaces, while waiting for Hélène, at the snare drum, to “gain in stability”, so that he could “drop this role and enjoy a bit more”. In this case, the physical metronome replaces the snare drum and the bass drum, allowing these musicians to concentrate on other musical aspects. Likewise, Vincent, in a deadlock over the working methods to play the piece, proposes a tool he hopes to lean on, in the sense that the other musicians will potentially be able to take reference from it. But unlike the percussionists, this doesn’t allow him after all to turn his musical attention on other things: the focus then is on appraising whether or not the musicians are in sync with this external reference. Vincent, who as the fanfare referent feels particularly concerned by the choices of working methods, finds himself in a new, self-created constraint. While he practically never plays the role of timekeeper for the group, by bringing this telephone-metronome, this object forces him to be the referent appraising whether or not the musicians correctly play the impacts of the beats at the same time with it.
 
But in fact, it’s not the way it works. For most of the instrumentalists present, their use of the metronome is neither on the side of the normative imposition of an off-the-ground pulsation, nor on the side of a tool proposing a reference for playing in homorhythm. When the group begins to work with the metronome, all the fanfare musicians concentrate in a new way on rhythmic issues, and, after about half an hour of constant trial and error with the metronome, they succeed in playing together on a common pulsation, but not with the metronome pulsation that continues its regular scansion beats out of the bass amp. Here, the musicians use the metronome to find their own way of playing this new piece rhythmically together – the application isn’t uniquely set in motion as a “make believe” pretence of playing with a metronome.[9] But they use it as a mediation tool, an external reference that helps them to focus on rhythmic issues, letting of course it play its role to the fullest, but in a certain way out of sync with the imposed norm – in a certain way that doesn’t stick to the metronome pulse, and without aiming to do so. The metronome thus has the same significance for action than in the institutional framework of a music class or an ensemble rehearsal – that is to help with rhythmic accuracy, eventually within an ensemble. And at the same time, it will be used to avoid using it. The valuation they attribute to the object and to what it enables them to do is different from that attributed to this object in a normative framework.
 
Thus, the use of the metronome, if prescribed by the object, doesn’t indicate the status and the power, the powers, granted to it – the metronome, conductor or reference point, the tool allowing to work towards being collectively with its beats, or to find a common pulse, eventually aside from the metronomic pulse. It undoubtedly doesn’t have the same significance for all the musicians present, and it can be considered as one of the playing and interacting spaces in-between the musical Dieulefit practices and the “under-layer” of the musical institutionalized practices on the national territory. This metronome implies different types of musical conceptions, which are as many constraints that are then discussed and negotiated in real situations.

 

The Agency of the Metronome

The metronome, with the various intentionalities it carries here, is therefore also an object that makes people do something. This tool is mobilized for its intended purpose (to provide a fixed and repeated reference point of time divisions), it also has a power of agency, a capacity to generate one or more actions.[10] By replacing the bass drum musician, the metronome assumes the function of a person. A unique and collective reference point, chiming a regular pulse from which the musicians cannot escape, the object becomes a form of embodiment of a conductor – but referring to a figure of the conductor who would act like this object, only “beating time”,[11] even as this figure of a conductor is rejected. This leads during the rehearsal time to a form of double bind, to which the musicians will have to resolve, through their playing, and particularly through their discussions. The metronome is thus able to “make the musicians to do something”, to incite them to find solutions for playing together rhythmic settings. Here, it is accepted as mediation enabling of “finding a collective pulsation”, that will allow the musicians to play during perambulation, while at the same time not appearing as an authoritarian figure who would oblige the musicians to be in time together with the metronome.
 
The object-metronome, during this Tapacymbal rehearsal, also makes people do something other than just repeating the same musical phrases attempting to get as close as possible to the amplified pulsation and/or to a common pulse. On the one hand, it triggers some sense of humor, which is both a safeguard and a sign of a possible drift that shouldn’t be overlooked, particularly that of the military band marching beat. In this way, Christian comments the starts of each playing sequence with the metronome by “Ein, zwei, drei, vier!”, a trait he reinforces when the musicians succeed in playing rhythmically together by calling out “Third Reich!” Christian is beside me, the most professionalized of the musicians present, having played in improvisation collectives, and perhaps because of that, the one for whom this tool most embodies the figure of the authoritarian conductor. But during the rehearsal break, in discussing the metronome, he insists, still with the tone of a joke, that “even so, it does allow you to play with each other…” These humoristic touches symbolically mobilize a particularly evocative universe for the Dieulefit residents. The way of saying marks a limit or a vigilance. It indicates that a kind of relationships emerges to rhythmic accuracy that can be interpreted differently from the meaning intended by the musicians present at this rehearsal. They can be analyzed as a regulator of the use of the object metronome. On the other hand, the use of the metronome provokes a debate: it triggers a discussion that initially took place during the rehearsal break, and then continued into a collective debate at Vincent’s home, with the quasi-totality of the musicians.

 

Internal Time and External Time

[During the rehearsal break, in the same room.]
 
Vincent [reacting to a remark by a musician that I didn’t hear]: And the metronome, among other things, allows you to… to… it’s the thing that we all have experienced, you plug in the metronome and you have the impression that it’s irregular.
 
Luc : hum hum, yes, …
 
Vincent : Because we’ve integrated, we’ve integrated a regularity in relation to what we felt, and we have to adapt this regularity to the others.
 
Christian : Sometimes it’s the fault of the batteries too…
[Laughs]
 
Cathie : Which means that the metronome, it’s completely inhuman…
 
Vincent : It’s inhuman, but makes you aware of your perception of time, and of the fact that it’s not always exactly the same as those you’re playing with. All the discussions where you say “but it’s you who’s speeding, but no it’s you, it’s you who’s irregular, but no it’s you”, it’s just the work to achieve a time perception that would be the same at a given moment. And after all, to make music, it’s just to get into the same irregularity. We don’t give a damn about the metronome. Except that it’s the tool that allows us to become aware of this.
 
Christian
[slightly ironically, now getting out of his other parallel conversation]: but it even allows you to play with others…”

Vincent, who develops in his musical practice a strong reflexivity, is particularly interested in these kinds of exchanges. The question of an individual perception of time, in relation to a metronomic reference perceived as fluctuating and plural, according to individuals, is a subject that motivates him and that he has already discussed outside the Tapacymbal context. It can also be interpreted in the light of the tension noted by Alfred Schütz (2006 [1984]) between internal time and external time, and the forms of communication created by the fact of playing together – a musician facing a work, or potentially a group of musicians:

In our problematic, it is essential to have a better understanding of the time dimension in which music takes place. […] [I]nternal time, the duration, is the very form of music’s existence. Of course, playing an instrument, listening to a record, reading a page of music, all these events take place in an external time, the time that you can measure with metronomes and clocks with which the musician “counts” to ensure the right “tempo”. […] [W]e consider internal time to be the very vehicle where the musical flow takes place. One can measure external time; there are minutes and hours, and the length of the sound grooves that the phonograph needle has to travel. There is not such a measure for the dimension of internal time in which the listener lives; there is no equivalence between its parts, if there are parts. (p.23)

To make music, it’s just to get into the same irregularity” is an answer to this tension.[12] Observing musicians “making music together” then consists in identifying how the flows of internal times are linked, and how their synchronization (including in a choice of heterochrony) is ordered in a external, common time.
 
Alfred Shütz:

It seems to me that all possible communication presupposes a relationship of “syntony” between the one who makes the communication and the receptor of communication. This relationship is achieved through the reciprocal distribution of the experience unfolding in the internal time of the Other, through the experience of a very strong live present shared together, through the experience of this proximity in the form of an “We”. (p.27)

 

The Situation of Rhythmic Work Confronted to the Sculpture
of a “Soft Metronome”

After the rehearsal, the discussion continues over a drink in Vincent’s home, which is also the site of his carpentry workshop. On the upright piano, at the entrance to the living room, near some objects and an open black mechanical metronome, there is a solid wooden sculpture that represents a mechanism that seems to have the same characteristics as Dali’s “soft watches”[13] — a kind of “soft metronome”, in proportions quite similar to a traditional metronome, with a larger base. This artistic object that diverts a mechanical object, and which a certain number of the fanfare musicians know well as they fairly regularly pay a visit to Vincent, also possesses a certain agency: the capacity to propose a re-reading of the metronome, of which it is a subversive representation, just after a rehearsal animated with this tool by the one who owns and displays this sculpture to the view of all the invited fanfare musicians. This diversion repositions the metronome as an object and not any more as a tool – a parallel that could be drawn to the telephone, which, during the rehearsal, was diverted into a metronome, shifting it then from object to tool. Above all, this representation of a soft metronome, that evokes an improbable beat, necessarily irregular and nonchalant, out of time, and at the same time frozen in its fluctuating movement in wood, brings about a subversive dimension to the object it diverts.
 
In the moment of this discussion during the “coup à boire” at Vincent’s, this object doesn’t arouse much reaction, perhaps because it’s already familiar to most of the musicians. It’s also in a part of the living room a little set back from where we’re sitting. When, moving over, I discover it and exclaim, in an already high sound level ambiance, only a few react, and these interventions are relayed only by laughter – Vincent’s in particular, who quickly returns to his discussion:

Valérie: “Yes, yes, I know it!”,
Christian: “No wonder we can’t play in rhythm!”
Benjamin: “Hey, say, Vincent, that’s the one you should bring to rehearsal!”

Like Christian’s jokes, the display of this “soft metronome” can perhaps be read as an adjustment that enables the mobilization of the metronome object, but with a shift, leading either to not taking it seriously, or to breaking down rigid representations that are frequently assigned to it, and enter into dissonance with the Dieulefit “common higher principles”.
 
Thus, what the metronome makes the Dieulefit fanfare do is 1) a common work on pulsation, allowing them to “get into the same irregularity”; 2) some humor, ensuring an adjustment between what the tool imposes and its use in the Tapacymbal context (strolling together, yes, marching in step together, no); 3) a deflection of its tool dimension into an artistic object; 4) a collective discussion on what is to feel a tempo and search together a common pulsation. Besides, two characteristics of the way of making music in Dieulefit, already encountered, emerge strongly from this situation. On the one hand, discussion and debate are essential and constitutive procedures in the construction of musicality. On the other hand, even in this very constrained and situated rehearsal situation, facing a metronome, a heteronomous tool par excellence, and as the objective is to create some common ground, the relationships to the object, as well as what its use provokes, are as heterogeneous as the musical forms present in the Dieulefit territory.
 
 

Part III : Reaching Agreement in and through Musical Practices,
within a Territory

Metronome Gap Made Possible

So, at the Dieulefit fanfare, this metronome may be for some musicians “just a metronome”, for others it’s at the same time a normative object, a tool it would be a pity to do without, the possibility of a working method among others, an object that can be associated with other ones, and even deflected and subverted. If it is used here, it’s because it doesn’t represent a danger in the eyes of the musicians – who know how to protect themselves from the metronome “fateful consequence[s]” developed by Jacques Bouët (Bouët 2011).[14]
 
For all that, the use of the metronome, in the situation described above, can also be read as a gap between what engenders adhesion reactions, that is to do what Vincent proposes, and even to help him in making his proposal possible, and to realize that in a certain manner. The collective creates the possibility of this gap by circumscribing it, through their manners of doing, to something that can take place in their functioning. Group playing, humor, definition of limits, discussion and debate mark the refusal to consider the metronome as the ultimate referent and reduce it to what it also is: an object and a tool enabling a form of experimentation.
 

Coordinating and Adjusting to Create a Common Ground in the Dieulefit Surroundings

In Dieulefit, the issue of “reaching an agreement” among musicians appears to be really central. It’s done in ways, and according to criteria, that are specific to the actors involved in these practices. The desire of “reaching agreement” between musicians to play together cannot be taken for granted. While it can be considered as a musical necessity arising from the musical contexts played, or as social evidence in certain contexts of normative practices, some collectives defend playing contexts that allow for an absence of reaching agreement, at least prior to periods of common artistic practices.[15] Moreover, the way Tapacymbal operates that makes it possible to join a group before knowing how to play, or to perform an instrumental solo without having mastered its rhythmic framework, indicates that it’s neither the musical stakes of the repertoires played, nor the norms implicit in group formats, that animate this desire of “reaching an agreement”, to find an adjusted manner of practicing music in Dieulefit.
 
My hypothesis is that musicians here decide to reach agreement, and on what they might agree, not only according to the modalities that fit them, but according to the ones that enable them to put into practice and to nurture “what they hold on to” and “that holds them on” (Bidet & al. [Dewey], 2011). These practices participate notably to give substance to some “common higher principles” identified in this article as the manners of making the Caem, Tapacymbal, the Festival 4th Résonnants, and which can also be found in spheres other than musical, particularly in the Dieulefit residents’ relationship to history, and in a few various tales told here and there. Reaching agreement among musicians is therefore done in and with their territory. The choice on which the musicians coordinate together to create a common ground, the modalities of adjustment, debate and circulation, are a way of building a territory of the music of Dieulefit surroundings, while at the same time fabricating some musical practices.
 

A Choice of Observation of Actions that are Situated, but taken in a Temporal Density

What remains to be seen, then, as close as possible to musical fabrication, is how and what is at play in this agreeing process among musicians as they construct their music. The profusion of musical practices in Dieulefit, paired with a terrain that developed over several years, provides a very dense analytical material that I treated in the two first parts of this thesis. Because this way of reaching agreement is dependent on actions that are situated (Ogien & Quéré, 2005), but situated in dense temporal layers, this third part draws on situations that are described and then analyzed as events chosen among other possible actions, identified at the end of my analyses as characteristic to the ways of making music in this territory.
 
Let’s pause for a moment to consider the temporal density of situated actions. Each situation, very closely observed, reveals “events” – as for example the fact of taking out a metronome. The metronome is an event in relation to my observations, because from where I stand in the understanding of how the group functions at this precise moment, coupled at the same time with the density of my representations of the tool, the metronome is for me unexpected, out of step with the identified and expected ways of doing things. While working on the rhythm has been a constant feature of the fanfare at least since I joined it, the first approaches to rhythmic work methods were far from the normativity of this tool. During my first interview with Jean, before joining the fanfare, he told me[16] how he and his drummer friend Nico had spent at least one hour with Dédé to turn around an iron barrel hammering in rhythm, getting this trumpetist to feel the rhythmic turn that he had to play in Libertango.
 
Bringing out the metronome in a rehearsal is also an event, because it can be identified as triggering certain actions. Bringing it out during rehearsals is not part of the group’s habits, and the gap with the normal proceedings provokes exchanges that are themselves transformed. But rhythmic preoccupations on the one hand, and discussions on musical preoccupations on the other hand, are part of Tapacymbal’s usual way of doing things. To analyze the scene with the metronome as an “episode” is therefore above all a construction of the onlooker, due in part to the constitution of my own eye, to the intermittence of the ethnographic eye, and to the form of the setting of the enigma. But this reading of events is articulated with a very thick temporal density, brought to light by at the same time the duration of the field survey, the diversity of the contexts in play I was able to observe, and the indices that really occurred during the rehearsals.
 
So, whether it’s Egyptian, which Tapacymbal has been working on for a few months, here with the help of the metronome, or even more so Oye Como va, which the fanfare has been playing for several years, and which was often experienced in concert situations, the rhythmic issues have been structuring the rehearsals since their first reading. Moreover, the pieces are constantly revisited, with a concern for finding together a common rhythm that is constantly retried and tested. Likewise, the Thursday night’s rehearsals only show intermittently the musical practice of the Tapacymbal’s instrumentalists. The playing time between rehearsals, that varies a lot from one instrumentalist to another, can be very substantial – the working session at Valérie’s home, described in the first part of the thesis, shows that there are procedures in operation that only take place during this actual time, and impact the playing during collective rehearsal. In another rehearsal, Christian addresses the group to suggest a rhythmic element that had not been identified on the score, because he feels he can do so in view of the way the ensemble is playing the piece: a manner of playing that “functions” becomes a problem because he feels it’s possible to institute it as such. In these situations of synchronization, the issue of listening is central – both for the musicians playing, and for the description that can be made of them in observation situations (Weeks, 1996).
 
Here, the process of reaching agreement among musicians in and with their territory is negotiated for the most part around rhythmic adjustments, in situations that were transcribed and analyzed in the first part of this article. These rhythmic adjustments produce something other than a simple rhythmic set-up. They say something of the relation to a norm, to some outside references, whether or not carried out by a conductor. Apart from the fact that these musicians consider the musical parameters in the way they interact (the flutist in Miss Liddl changes the attack of a note, then its pitch to match what is rhythmically expected), the rhythmic question, like the metronome, is solved in such a way as to allow for discussions and circulations and the possibility of a strolling that draws the audience into this process of reaching agreement.
 
Moreover, the process of reaching agreement through musical practice with and within its territory is achieved here through circulations – of musical elements, of roles, of voices – and through translation operations and adjustments, so that each voice counts and can be heard, carried, claimed (in the sense of claim, Laugier 2004), and participate in the common way of doing things. Some of these operations are described in the second part of the thesis, the analysis of which has made possible to throw some light on these ways of doing. The analysis of these musical practices shows that these ways of doing things concern and are supported by a committed music theory, which creates in the Dieulefit surroundings the conditions and the sound of democratic forms of expressivity.
 
 

Conclusion

(Extracts from “In Conclusion – Renewing One’s View to a Situation of Rehearsal”, p. 397)

To understand Tapacymbal through the logic of Dewey’s inquiry enables to consolidate us in our view of musical practices as an opportunity for investigations and experimentations, as instrumentalists, at the same time, fabricate music in ways they define in the course of their practice. Here, the constant problematization puts musical constructions back into play on a daily basis. Ways of coordinating and adjusting are elaborated in such a manner that plurality is guaranteed and visible, thus working through music on meanings that are what the musicians hold on to, and what holds them.
 
Observing and analyzing the implementation of Tapacymbal practices while participating in them, led me in the second part of the thesis to consider the actors of the Dieulefit’s musical practices as a community of investigators. The constitutive elements of their way of doing things, identified at the time, can be found here in the very precise forms of musical constructs, caught up in very dense temporal thicknesses. The way they are committed in structuring their music school, their ensembles and the festival, is also constitutive of their musical practices, and at the same time reinforce them. To identify these manners of doing things in closely observed musical practices, at the core of the fabrication of music wasn’t immediate, and referring to Dewey allowed me to strengthen an intuition that could not easily get rid of a reading of the situation as a simple problem of rhythmic setting up[17]. Thus, the duration and recurrence of my participation to Tapacymbal’s rehearsals and performances enabled me to consider anew these ways of doing things and their meaning, especially as I saw questions that, as a musician in the ensemble, seemed to me settled, being constantly brought back into play opening up new lines of investigation – something I wouldn’t have been able to identify in a shorter time span. The difficulty in sharpening my eye mainly resided in the strength of the highly integrated rhythmic isochrone approach, which constituted a screen for listening to rhythm other than in relation to a normative reference, with time sliced in isochrone pulsations. While this didn’t prevent me from thinking beyond various time organizations, as in this case by patterns and polyrhythms, nor from theoretically making it possible to consider them otherwise, it remains for a long time in my feelings and in my playing, and therefore in my listening, a background that was difficult to ignore, and I had to draw on my musician’s experiences to get rid of it. (…)
 
This music-social isochrone representation doesn’t only correspond here to my musician’s profile trained in specialized music education institutions: it’s also effective within Tapacymbal, as constitutive of one part of their repertoire. But it’s only one of several conceptions at work. A clearly differentiated practice would undoubtedly have obliged, and therefore allowed, to find other ways of observing rhythmic issues.
 
The idea there was to both listen with an isochronous approach, partly constitutive of the practices, and to construct the hypothesis that these musicians perhaps also had other manners of considering their own rhythmic set-up, opening ways to other kinds of listening. The “metronome episode” was in this sense a turning point[18] in my own investigation, leading me to consider that isochronous, or even heteronomous, pulsation was for these fanfare musicians one way among others to envision rhythmic issues, but that, with safeguards in place, it didn’t exclude other ways of doing things and should therefore be considered in the midst of a plurality. What I read as a double infringement of the technical object, that is summoning the metronome when nobody is forcing them to use it, and not to obey to the regularity of the metronome even though they do use it, is a form of hijacking of the object and appropriation of the tool.

 


1. In France, “orphéon” originated at the beginning of the 19th Century, in the form of workers’ choral ensembles. It gave rise later to local brass bands.

2. The following development is largely based on Aurélie Barbuscia’s article, “la pratique musicale, entre l’art et la mécanique. Les effets du métronome sur le champ musical du XIXe siècle” [Musical practice, between art and mechanics. The effects of the metronome on the musical domain during the 19th century.], Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, n°45, 2012.

3. Quoted by Gaspard Salatko, seminar Dynamique de la culture & anthropologie des activités artistiques et patrimoniales on the issue of « Agency in questions », co-animated by Emmanuel Pedler and Gaspard Salatko, Centre Norbert Elias, EHESS Marseille, February 25, 2021.

4. The rationalization and the levelling of time relations exceed the sole musical issues, which is imbedded in a global movement of society. Notably, the decimalization time units dates from the end of the 18th Century (Souchier, 2019), and fifty years after, the rail traffic implement the first unifications of timetables (Baillaud, 2006). But the fact that musical practices were very quickly influenced by this movement is not insignificant.

5. Report written in 1815 by Henri Montant Berton, member of the music section of the Académie Française, quoted by Barbuscia, 2012, p.58

6. « The subject-creator ambitions to reinforce his control over the very manner to interpret his work, by increasingly exerting his authority over the performer, who is invited to restitute as closely as possible his original intentions.” (Barbuscia, 2012, p. 63; see also Menger, 2010).

7. On the one hand, this background involves a form of unconsciousness among musicians – in the sense of a practice so integrated that it achieves the status of evidence for the musicians who convene this support object as soon as a rhythmic issue is raised. On the other hand, it contains a form of necessary conscientization – a relationship to rhythm and pulsation, built with a logic corresponding to that of the metronome, being indispensable during the academic studies.

8. It is indeed the object “metronome” that Jean-Louis invokes here – an object that seems here to have obliterated the other models of reference – cf. infra the development at the end of the chapter.

9. This refers to certain uses of scores and parts, discussed in the chapter on the fanfare, where certain musicians who cannot decipher the musical codes written on the score or part declare that they need them in order to play (Cheyronnaud, 1984).

10. This analysis is based on the seminar Dynamique de la culture & anthropologie des activités artistiques et patrimoniales on the issue of « Agency in questions », co-animated by Emmanuel Pedler and Gaspard Salatko, Centre Norbert Elias, EHESS Marseille, February 25, 2021.

11. The composer Hector Berlioz proposed such an image of the conductor in its short story Euphonia, “a utopia that describes a city completely devoted to music, thanks to the benefits of a ‘despotic’ government” (Buch, 2002, p. 1006): “An ingenious mechanism that could have been found five or six centuries earlier, if you had taken the trouble to look for it, and which endures the impulse of the movements of the conductor without being visible to the audience, marking, in front of the eyes of each performer, and very close to him, the beats of the measure, also indicating in a very precise manner the various degrees of forte or piano.” Hector Berlioz, “Euphoria ou la vie musicale”, Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 11-17, April 28, 1844, pp.146-147. Buch (2002, p.1007) gives the precision that « this text was reprinted by Berlioz, with slight modifications, in Les soirées de l’orchestre; you can find a separated edition in Editions Ombres, Toulouse, 1992.”

12. Vincent’s conclusion that “To make music, it’s just to get into the same irregularity. We don’t give a damn about the metronome” can also be read more simply as a form of response to the double constraint he imposed on the group when he took out his phone with this application. Vincent didn’t anticipate that, with this tool, the group would succeed to find a common pulse but not exactly with the metronome – and he’d doubtlessly have trouble, like me, to determine precisely why the group succeeded to stabilize in this way. Once the goal attained, he drops the tool, even if the tool itself hasn’t been used in an expected and normative manner: what matters now is to be able to play this piece together in a common rhythm, for strolling.

13. « The surrealist oil-on-canvas by Salvatore Dali, La persistence de la mémoire (The Persistence of Memory), painted in 1931, represents liquefying watches, playing with the contrast rigidity/passage of time, a preoccupation of the artist as intimate as it was linked to the questioning of modern physics (Dali, 1951).

14. « This ingenious marriage between physical time and musical time arranged by Maëtzel [in reality invented by Winkel (Barbuscia, 2012)] was a little forced. In fact, it had a fateful consequence that the homo metronomicus is no longer aware nowadays: the irregular pulsation oscillations were excluded from musical time, except in rubato and the like. (Bouët, 2011). Brouët’s thesis of “recovered pulsations [… from] before the metronome era” is developed further in the analysis of working on rhythm.

15. I think in particular of the “Voice, Music Body” encounters animated by Giacomo Spica Capobianco – even if it could be argued that participation in such encounters is already a form a prior agreement. See the article « Creative Nomad Creation » in the present PaaLabRes Edition

16. This part of the interview is recounted in the third section of the first part of the thesis concerning Tapacymbal, when Jean tells me about the instrumentalists of the ensemble before I joined the group.

17. It’s also a problem of rhythmic set-up, but to consider it only on this angle doesn’t allow to see what is otherwise at play, and the way it is being played.

18. It’s why I kept this title to emphasize a way of “setting the enigma” of my thesis

 


 

Quoted Publications

Barbuscia Aurélie, 2012, « La pratique musicale, entre l’art et la mécanique. Les effets du métronome sur le champ musical au XIXe siècle », Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, n°45, pp. 53 – 68.

Baillaud Lucien, 2006, « Les chemins de fer et l’heure égale », Revue d’histoire des chemins de fer n°35, pp. 25 – 40.

Bidet Alexandra, Louis Quéré et Gérôme Truc, 2011, « Ce à quoi nous tenons. Dewey et la formation des valeurs », in John Dewey, La formation des valeurs, Paris, La Découverte, pp. 5 – 64.

Bouët Jacques, 1997, « Pulsations retrouvées. Les outils de la réalisation rythmique avant l’ère du métronome », Cahiers d’ethnomusicologie, n°10, pp. 107 – 125.

Buch Esteban, 2002, « Le chef d’orchestre : pratiques de l’autorité et métaphores politiques », Annales. Histoires, Sciences sociales, n°4, pp. 1001 – 1028.

Cheyronnaud Jacques, 1984, « Musique et Institutions au village », Ethnologie française, n°3, pp. 265 – 280.

Gibson James, 1979, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company.

Emmanuel Hondré, 2002, La Marseillaise, Éditions Art et culture.

Laugier Sandra, 2004, « Désaccord, dissentiment, désobéissance, démocratie », Cités, n°17, pp. 39 – 53.

Menger Pierre-Michel, 2010, « Le travail à l’œuvre. Enquête sur l’autorité contingente du créateur dans l’art lyrique », Annales, Histoire, Sciences Sociales, Éditions de l’EHESS, pp. 743 – 786.

Quéré Louis et Albert Ogien, 2005, Le vocabulaire de la sociologie de l’action, Paris, Ellipses.

Schütz Alfred, 2006 [1951], « Faire la musique ensemble. Une étude des rapports sociaux », Sociétés, n°93 pp. 15 – 28.

Weeks Peter, 1996, « Synchrony lost, synchrony regained: The achievement of musical co-ordination », Human Studies n°19. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Netherlands, pp. 199 – 228.