Urgence, 2024
See below : Dégâts mineurs
Open studio curated by Fondation H Paris.
Loudspeaker orchestra composed of a pocket radio, a radio-CD player, a cassette recorder, a Bluetooth speaker, two loudspeakers, a DVD player, photographs presented on an LCD screen, and a video projector. In the reading room: a documentary selection of nineteen books, 2024, Paris.
Produced as part of the program Ondes, by Cité internationale des arts and French Ministry of Overseas Territories, 2024–2025.
Urgence evokes the passage of an informational cyclone, composed of second-hand objects and familiar everyday elements that become broadcasting points for sonic fragments: live radio transmissions, podcast excerpts, musical compositions, and field recordings, fixed on analog media such as CDs and cassettes. These sounds intermingle with various documents—archives, books, images—layering strata of information that saturate the space.
Through this immersive environment, Urgence invites the audience to question its relation to attention and trust: which sources to hold onto in a universe of contradictory signals?
Within this proliferation, the performance opens a reflective space on how information is selected, and on the necessity of filtering in the face of overabundance.
Caribbean sound: The Connective Possibilities of Radio
“In a series of non-linear entries, writer Kenny Cairo rewires the sonics of radio and connectivity, from Guadeloupe to Jamaica to Paris.
In September 2024, I began a research-creation residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. I developed the sound installation Urgence, assembled as an orchestra of second-hand loudspeakers. Activated as part of a performance curated by Fondation H, each loudspeaker broadcast sound autonomously, drawing the audience into a sound space saturated with information. At the heart of this performance, one sound-emitting object held a central place: the radio.
Elevated to the status of an active work within Urgence, the radio embodies, in the insular Caribbean context, the possibilities of flight towards Elsewhere through sound and of exploration from the listening site. It also remains a tool for reconnecting Antillean realities through a broadcast that abolishes the archipelago’s maritime borders. This reflection stems from a listening experience within the Guadeloupean landscape, and notably informed my work at the Cité internationale des arts.”
Out on Contemporary &
Gallery of the Cité internationale des arts, Paris
April 3rd — July 17th
Installation: print on fabric, composition, cassette player, printed text
Curation:
Ana Janevski, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez
Curational assistant:
Simona Dvorak
Dégâts mineurs explores the social impacts caused by hurricanes and evokes the next step: the reconstruction not only of places but also of lost relationships and connections. In response to the performance “Urgence,“ developed and presented during the artist’s residency at the Cité internationale des arts in 2024, the artist questions the complex relationship with information in a data-saturated world.
Here, a cassette player, a central element of the performance, serves as a bridge between the two projects. By allowing the audience to play or pause the cassette, the artist invites an overlap of sound layers and a disruption of the harmony between the initially present image and sound. This element also opens a reflexion on the use of sound recordings to present past-performances.
Dégâts mineurs, 2025
