A series of short sound interventions, in pairs, in public spaces in Paris, both outdoors (passages, squares, esplanades, parks) and indoors (bridges, tunnels), from the Bois de Vincennes to La Défense, between May and October 2025.
"Discovering a place I didn't know through my senses by moving around a little (or even just turning my body) prepared me to listen to the environment I was in. In this situation, starting to produce sound almost unconsciously, without thinking about quality or articulation, allowed me to engage in a dynamic and comprehensive activity that raised questions impossible to answer, such as: why make sound? How can I listen, in the widest sense, feel and observe everything that is happening around me and within me? When should I start and stop the sound? Is what I am doing more musical or sonic? But in reality, I don't have time to think about it. At that moment, my choice is to maintain my autonomy without being overly influenced by the sound and atmosphere I am receiving. I am careful not to enter into an 'action-reaction' or 'symbiotic agreement' relationship with the environment. Perhaps I play the role of a witness, but I try to improvise by giving a minimum sonic presence. Sometimes I feel as if I am part of the whole that I receive. Yet environmental sounds cannot express themselves like human beings, or rather, human beings never stop expressing themselves in various ways in the world (which brings us to the now classic subject of 'cohabitation' or 'symbiosis'). There is one thing that interests me here: playing with things that exist outside of me, things that never act like human beings, things that have a raw sound character but which, to me, sound discreet because they are simply sound. As an animist, I interpret this character as a silent, non-verbal posture."
Seijiro Murayama
Limited edition of 150 copies.
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.
Seijiro Murayama (born 1957 in Nagasaki) is a percussionist and drummer. In 1982, he toured the United States with
Keiji Haino, and during his stay in New York immediately after that , he encountered the radical, provocating music of
John Zorn. After coming back to Japan, through the explosive sound trio Absolute Null Punkt, under the influence of Akira Aida, Kenichi Takeda, Masami Akita, the magazine Transonic, musicians
Derek Bailey, Kaoru Abe, etc., he embarked on an exploration of improvisation. Although he temporarily refrained from performing due to doubts about the styles of the first generation of improvisers he had followed, he restarted playing, thanks to the movements such as Onkyo in Japan, named by certain foreign critic in the 90's. In 99, he had the opportunity to live and work in France, that changed his way of thinking and playing, he began to concentrate in particular on solo improvisation, which had been a long-standing challenge. Today, he mainly performs in solo, duo and trio formats. As for collaborations with other fields' artists, he notes that even if he has experiences quite a lot of sorts of collaborations with dance and theater, his current interest is more towards words and images, but finally it depends on what kind of person the Other is.
