Plunged into the bowels of Ircam with the immersive sound of Espro, or right in the Galerie 3 of the Centre Pompidou, with a view of the outside world, the ManiFeste 2023 festival welcomes the clamor of the world and celebrates the coming together of art, music and technology.

Present and vigilant

A black flag, set in motion by the dancers who take it in turns, floats above the stage in anticipation of the show... With choreographer Ula Sickle, the Belgian ensemble Ictus has taken over Galerie 3 at the Centre Pompidou to present a new version of Holding Présent. Holding Présenta new scenic proposition in which the gestures of musicians and dancers interpenetrate in a collective space and a community of movements.

Breaking down barriers between practices, inventing new concert formats and listening devices (his series of Liquid rooms) and encountering other artistic expressions, such as dance, with which it has been collaborating since 1994: this is the DNA of the Belgian ensemble Ictus, one of the main players in the " open scenes " movement, which signs its first collaboration with Ula Sickle. Musicians and dancers are invited for six performances of Moviment (the Centre Pompidou's event where the visual arts mingle with cinema, performance, music, speech...) and Ircam's ManiFeste festival.

The audience is seated on the risers that encircle the elliptical stage space, at the same height as the four Ictus musicians (flute, percussion, keyboard, electric guitar), who don't just play their instruments, but also venture onto the stage to manipulate sound objects and dance. A ring of loudspeakers and Led panels around the perimeter of the auditorium provide sound diffusion (Sylvain Cadars, Ircam) and lighting dramaturgy (Ofer Smilansky). Texts and a dozen or so musical sequences follow one another, listed works by composers of the last forty years (whose open form leaves a certain latitude to the performers) as well as improvisations and a work in creation, Music for Holding Present, commissioned from Turkish composer Didem Coskunseven, who is in the audience. Participating in the choreography and sound continuum, musicians and dancers are often confused, as the instrumentarium deployed does not always require the expertise of a professional. For example, sound artist Gert Aersten's aluminum tubes are resonated with the finger; and while Ruben Martinez Orio alerts the ears with his amplified triangle (Alvin Lucier's signature piece) at the start of the performance, he is surrounded by his musician and dancer partners when Lucier's version for four triangles resonates even more intensely. Pauline Oliveros's Rock Piece features the entire cast clashing stones, giving the illusion of a giant lithophone. We are stunned to discover after an hour's performance that the "dancer" in the red costume, who has been part of the choreographic movement from the start, is none other than the pianist from Ictus!

Ula Sickle's choreography is immediately appealing, with clear, powerful gestures that speak of resistance, uprising and combat: arms raised, hands open, fists crossed, head dodging blows: gestures that are repeated from one dancer to the next, almost in canon, as the movement becomes collective, culminating in a climax of intensity and fervor carried by all participants. Amanda Barrio Charmelo and Mohamed Toukabri, in black tunics and pants, soft high-top sneakers (like the rest of the troupe) dance a duet, a more intimate, fluid moment of floor choreography during the improvisation of the musicians on the perimeter of the stage. They are also at their posts for the performance of A giant Blowing machine or a pocket tin sandwich by Berlin-based composer, performer and Sardinian cellist Stellan Veloce. The instruments used here are harmonicas and megaphones, which amplify the harmonicas, reactivating the idea of collective protest.

Didem Coskunseven 's piece is divided into three sequences alternating with other sound proposals. The first, for modular synthesizer, is very impressive in terms of the masses of sound it carries; the second is more lunar and poetic, where Tom Pauwels ' electric guitar joins the world of the synthesizer. The final piece, which lasts around twenty minutes, is divided into two sections: an electroacoustic section opening up a multiplied space, a tsunami of sounds inhabited by breath, noisy surges and calls; before the five musicians reunite in a finale of brighter tones and gentle sway, featuring the electric guitar.

The rhombus spun by the dancer in the end , in which the permanence of the breath is eternalized, recalls the twirling of the black flag in silence, a symbol of the individual gesture (Holding Présent) that rises to the power of collective action.

Composing sound in Projection Space

Reopened last January, Ircam'sEspro is undoubtedly the ultimate acoustic venue, a modular space where sound experiments and other technological performances can take place in optimal listening conditions. Four pieces and as many spatial configurations involving electronics are featured in a concert where music and art-science confront and challenge each other.

Composer-researcher and computer music producer José Miguel Fernandez is at the helm of Embeddind Tangles (2013), the cornerstone of composer Lara Morciano's repertoire for flute and live electronics. Anne Cartel, alone on stage, impresses us with her energy and virtuosity in a piece of polymorphous figures, conceived in terms of its projection in space.

Luciano Berio is being celebrated this year at ManiFeste (the 20th anniversary of his death before the centenary of his birth in 2025). After Laborinthus II, which opened the festival, it's Thema, Omaggio a Joyce (1958) for magnetic tape that we hear through the Espro listening device. The work opens with Cathy Berberian reading Joyce's text (the eleventh chapter of Ulysses). The archival document is touching. The sound of the tape is vintage, as are the studio manipulations: text fragmentation, mixing, editing and filtering. The multichannel version breathes new life into this historic piece, in which Berio celebrates the female voice coming out of the loudspeakers.

Matteo Gualandi, a young Italian composer spotted at the Cursus concert in 2021, wrote the text (in Italian, English and French) and music for his Fiori di sangue e rugiada (2023), a 14-page diary for mezzo-soprano, violin, cello and electronics, nine of which are performed this evening. Three poetic visions follow one another. Violin (Alexandra Greffin-Klein) and cello (Clotilde Lacroix) are on either side of the singer(Stéphanie Guerin, very hieratic): the set-up is sober, the strings as close as possible to the text (the tuning changes in the second vision) and the electronics at the service of the poetic translation, often merging with the voice. The radicality of the instrumental writing and the stylization of the vocals, whether whispered, chopped up or distraughtly lyrical, capture the listener's attention. Each of the flowers that punctuate the diary pages (fiore primo, secondo, terzo) is accompanied by the sound of rain, like a gentle refrain. The third vision, bringing back the delicate texture of the strings in a very stretched time and song, is sublimely beautiful.

GALLERY 2

José Miguel Fernandez is a virtuoso of real time, the focus of all his research, and he has conceived his new work, Sources rayonnantes, for Espro through what he calls "an orchestration of space". The twelve musicians of the Court-Circuit ensemble are positioned around the perimeter of the hall. Conductor Jean Deroyer faces the audience, in charge of direction and electronic engineering via the black glove he wears on his right hand. It's fitted with a sensor that enables the computer first to recognize the conductor's beat, based on a recording of gestures made beforehand, and then to engage the electronic processes in real time: "action and developments that sometimes prove more elaborate than instrumental writing", stresses the composer, who controls operations at the console, alongside RIM Serge Lemouton. The result obtained and heard is spectacular, playful as much as wild, realizing that sought-after continuum between the instrumental source and its propagation in space, its radiation in terms of ascending trajectories and superimposed layers of synthesis. The sound constellation is unheard-of, and tonight we perceive both its elemental, rough intensity and its powerful, jubilant momentum.

Michèle Tosi

ManiFeste, Centre Pompidou, Paris - 16-06-2023
Holding Presentperformance ; Ula Sickle, concept, choreography ; Tom Pauwels (Ictus), concept, musical direction. Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Stellan Veloce, Didem Coskunseven (CM), composition ; Augustin Muller, Ircam electronics (for Didem Coskunseven) ; Sylvain Cadars, Ircam sound diffusion: Gert Aertsen, original instruments; Amanda Barrio Charmelo, Marina Delicado, Marie Goudot, Ruben Martinez Orio, Michael Schmid, Mohamed Toukabri, Tom Pauwels, Ula Sickle, creation and performance; Ofer Smilansky, lighting and sound; Richard Venlet, set design; Wang Consulting, costumes.ManiFeste, Ircam projection space, Paris - 17-06-2023
Anyway with Lara Morciano (b. 1968): Embedding Tangles for flute and electronics; Luciano Berio (1925-2003) : Thema, Omaggio a Joyce, for magnetic tape; Matteo Gualandi (b. 1995): Fiori di sangue e rugiada, for mezzo-soprano, violin, cello and electronics; José Miguel Fernández (b. 1973): Sources rayonnantes, for 12 instruments and electronics (CM). Stéphanie Guérin, mezzo-soprano; Anne Cartel, flute; Alexandra Greffin-Klein,

Photos © Hervé Veronèse
Photos © Quentin Chevrier
Photos © Gary Gorizian