Urgence, 2024
Sound performance
Urgence is the first chapter of the performance trilogy Urgence — Désastre — Catastrophe.
Each performance in the trilogy is paired with an installation representing a degree of "Dégâts" (Damages).
Below, discover Dégâts mineurs.
Open studio curated by Fondation H Paris at
Cité internationale des arts
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.
Tadeo Kohan, curator
Working on performativity, memory, and the information conveyed through sound, Kenny Cairo creates an active sound and visual installation. The project explores the multiplicity of sound sources as a way to reflect on the space-time of listening. Engaging the artist’s movements around the audience, the work consists of a visual and technical setup – an ensemble of sound emitters (radio, cassette player, DVD player, computer, speakers, etc.) arranged in the space – and sound content (recordings of storms or carnivals, family testimonies, composed or borrowed pieces, the randomness of radio frequencies).
Broadcast simultaneously, each source in this vocal and musical ensemble is activated by the artist like a conductor. Carefully and urgently adjusting the volumes of this dissident choir, he embodies a sense of powerlessness in controlling his environment. A precise, free, and performed sound composition, the installation engages, transforms, and saturates the space. Kenny Cairo thus invites reflection on information, communication, and memory as situated and sensitive mediums of transmission.
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
Curated by Ana Janevski, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez
Curational assistant: Simona Dvorak
Dégâts mineurs, 2025
Installation
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.
