A solo CD based essentially on sound recordings in commercial ports.
"Between 2017 and 2023, while assisting
Tarek Atoui with his
Waters'Witness project, I accumulated a series of recordings in maritime ports, which I have used to create this thematic suite. Rooted in documentary reflection, it presents the unembellished sounds of commercial ports and their coastlines.
In commercial ports, safety conditions are paramount. Access is strictly monitored, and movement is tightly controlled. Opportunities for listening are therefore subject to the approval of security personnel, as well as the mandatory use of helmets and protective footwear. A strategic game then unfolds at each port, dictated by imposed time constraints. Without a precise aim, yet with no possibility of waiting, every decision becomes a gamble shaped by environments, situations, and events. Balancing experience and experimentation, the listening body seeks to infiltrate the obviousness of the ordinary, briefly or intensely probing liminal materialities.
Ports and shipyards are environments where it is men who occupy (almost) all on-site roles: from dockers to lorry drivers, welders to forklift operators. The presence of women is discreet, often confined to offices (administration, engineering, etc.). These recordings audibly reflect this reality, shaped predominantly by one gender.
Limited edition of 200 copies.
A2 poster included.
For more than 20 years, while listening to the environment, Éric La Casa (born 1968, Tours, lives and works in Paris) has been questioning the perception of reality and has expanded the notion of what's musical today. Through his aesthetic of capturing sound, his work fits equally into the fields of sound art and music. As a result of his in situ listening processes, he creates forms (of attention) that creep into the venues, slowly infuse there, and become other possible spaces. In the same way that the letter stimulates a country's reading, the in situ aesthetic object renews our relationship to space and landscape.
