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Composer, performer and sound artist Loïc Guénin (b. 1976) likes to encourage exchanges and collaborative work with his performers, in an approach that blends research and experimentation, sound installation and performance. His desire to create and explore has led him to invent, alongside traditional scores, other reading supports, graphic boards and interpretation grids situated between the written and the unwritten, an in-between that he attempts, for us, to define.
Loïc Guénin, your graphic writing and your projects linking architecture and sound place you on the fine line between music and the visual arts...
I have the feeling that my approach to sound can sometimes be closer to that of sound artists who create installations and happenings than to so-called "contemporary" music, which is highly written, with specific work on instrumental technique and often constructed and transmitted in a rather top-down gesture, from the composer to the performers and then to the audience. People associate me more with an artist who explores sound and invents concepts than with a purely classical composer.
You often point out the presence of "functional sounds" in our living environment. "functional sounds which, according to you, "are gradually standardizing our environment and transforming the way we listen"....
This observation is linked to the Walden project. We live in an increasingly noisy world that invades our daily lives, with manifestations akin to sound design that can carry information or imply specific behaviors; sounds sent to make us react, cell phone rings and other signal jingles; in short, a whole phonic universe that takes over and trivializes listening more than it invites us to stretch out our ears. For my part, I try to restore the active role of the ear and stimulate acute listening by paying attention to all sounds. As I like to say and write, I'm convinced that listening is the key to our social relationship, to our positioning in the world around us.
I'd like you to tell us more about this Walden [un lieu]project that has occupied you for almost ten years...
The first Walden was brought to the stage in May 2015. It was created by theensemble C Barré directed by Sébastien Boin and hosted by the GMEM-CNCM in Marseille as part of the Les Musiques festival. It was Christian Sébille and Paul Fournier who first gave me the means to bring this rather crazy project to life. Today, there are 14 Waldens and as many venues as I've been able to invest with renowned performers to share this common experience: Ars Nova, L'Instant Donné, l'Intercontemporain and other musicians outside ensembles.
What does it consist of?
Walden refers to the story published in 1854 by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Walden or Life in the Woods, a best-seller in citizen ecology and reflection on man's place in his environment. The book is a diary in which the American writer and philosopher recounts his existence, alone for two years in his cabin on the shores of Walden Lake in Massachusetts, where he spent his days listening, surveying, walking, drawing, recording, thinking and writing. It's this posture, this porosity with places, but also with people, that I've sought to adopt in each of the Walden [a place] projects. This involves long residencies (sometimes a year) in the places concerned, allowing me to immerse myself in the atmosphere and configuration of the buildings, and to collect forms, materials and words, a multitude of things and materials that I amsemble in small notebooks and which I then use to write scores that I call graphic plates.
How are they presented?
These are scores that make little or no use of traditional writing. The scores are very different from one another, and each one is unique in its own way, derived from the collection I made and attached to the place where it took shape: the Château de Ranrouët for the Athénor center, the Cité Radieuse in Marseille, the Abbaye de Noirlac, the Royaumont gardens, Mont Ventoux, the Cité de la Musique in Metz or the Philharmonie de Paris, etc. These colorful graphic representations use symbols linked to my collections. These color graphics use symbols related to my collections. They are intended to be performed in the very place of their creation, and for varied and sometimes even free instrumental nomenclatures. They are not just diagrams or drawings that give free rein to the performers; they are simply the scores, full of constraints.
The process is reminiscent of Éliane Radigue's work with her performers, and the oral transmission she claims?
As far as I know, Éliane Radigue starts from images shared with the musicians, but doesn't necessarily design graphic supports. However, I'm well aware that my way of working requires long periods of exchange and sharing with the performers. Some things are left unsaid because we can't (un)write them down, but they emerge little by little, through discussion and sometimes even simply by feeling the thickness of a place or a graphic line. The scores I submit to the performers require a long process of maturation: I want them to see the locations before the rehearsals, the better to immerse themselves in the material collected. It takes time for them to familiarize themselves with the complexity of the symbols used, to decipher the signs and grasp their deeper meaning. There's a constant back-and-forth between architecture, sound, writing and creation. This oral transmission is also effective in the event that other musicians - as has already happened - would like to play a score again, in the same venue or, why not, in other structures. But I particularly like the idea that the concert given in situ is also the unique moment when the place resonates, in the instant of the performance. The Walden pieces are not necessarily intended to be played again, or recorded.
Is there any space left for improvisation during the concert?
For each instrumentalist, there are choices to be made beforehand, but once these decisions have been taken, the writing is fixed and measured, leaving no real space for free improvisation. On the other hand, some scores allow for circulation choices that can change the overall course within the limits of controlled randomness.
You also mention two fundamental principles in the work you do with your graphic plates: "Here, everyone has their own role to play, their own freedom of interpretation, reading and listening, while respecting the double principle dear to John Cage of interpenetration and non-obstruction." What do you mean by this?
These are the principles of his master Suzuki, enacted by Zen Buddhist philosophy (in theAvantamsaka sutra). In collective work, these principles apply here to sound practice: what I do must merge and interact with the work of others (interpenetration); I avoid doing anything that would obstruct the proposals of those around me (non-obstruction). As project leader, I sometimes have to moderate certain impulses and regulate things when ego problems disrupt the collective effort...
Walden (Philharmonie), performed last June, brought together seven soloists from the Ensemble Intercontemporain under your direction, and a group of amateurs who participated in collecting materials and creating parts of the graphic board. They were provided with sound objects and small percussion instruments, and worked in pairs with members of the EIC. Wasn't the idea of confronting the crème de la crème of the contemporary music scene with non-professional musicians a risky one?
I love a challenge. The quality of the sound reproduction rewarded my expectations, and working in pairs with professionals and amateurs confirmed the benefits of oral transmission. By working in this way and entrusting the performers with my graphic scores, I'm seeking to reposition the roles predefined by a social history of music. The composer, the conductor, the musicians, the listeners... Today, I have around thirty graphic scores that I'd like to have published so that musicians can take them up: this would be a way of bringing to a close a project that has kept me busy for ten years, working with fabulous ensembles in France and abroad, and in different venues each time.
Le Cri d'Antigoneyour musical show directed by Anne Monfort, premiered last May in Marseille and has just been revived at the Arsenal de Metz. The score mixes traditional notation and graphic boards, for example in tableau 2, for the guitarist who is not a reader. The score also includes drawn material to guide the performers, using the Styrofoam or dead leaves they have on hand. Once again, we find ourselves in an in-between world with porous borders...
Space is indeed difficult to define. Around me, I have performers who are very comfortable with the codes of written music and who also have this ability to listen to others and to react to the demands of the moment. Today, many of them link these two dimensions in their practice. I'm keen to give them the opportunity to assert themselves as unique artists, while preserving the in-between that means the music won't sound exactly as you'd expect, but with that little something extra brought about by the uniqueness of the individual. It seems to me that this is the very essence of interpretation. In Le Cri d'Antigone, this can be heard particularly in the solos I wrote for certain.It's not written down, it's not explained, but it's felt and worked out on the nose, "à la feuille" as we say among ourselves... What interests me in the notation I propose is to draw from the humanity of each individual something unique in the service of a collective project.
In addition to your work as a composer, you also improvise as part of the noise duo NOORG and with musicians such as Serge Tessot-Gay, Audrey Chen and eRikm...
In his book Improviser librement, abécédaire d'une expériencethe improvising musician and thinker Le Quan Ninh, with whom I had the good fortune to work a few years ago, poses the question: "What do I have to give up to start improvising freely? Do I have to? Shouldn't I leave what I know, for good?" I really have this feeling of abandonment and letting go towards a state of total and absolute porosity when I improvise, for example, in the duo NOORG, alongside Éric Brochard. Before each of the duo's concerts, we never talk about music, or even about the form, direction or objects to be traversed. We literally plunge body and soul into the sound, without anything or anyone seeming to drive anything. It's an experience that accepts no concessions. It's very difficult to talk about and describe the state that free improvisation puts us in.
How does free improvisation relate to composition?
I don't have the feeling that free improvisation requires the total abandonment of another practice, such as composition, writing or playing under constraints. For my part, I navigate through different practices that feed off each other. My approach to composing and sharing with performers in order to create sound objects, paths, shapes, thicknesses and materials, never places me in the position of the knowing, untouchable demiurge who masters all the parameters of sound and gives birth to music through his recognizable and admirable gesture... In the projects that drive me, the boundary between the written and the unwritten is very blurred. The sonic result of a collective experiment based on a score, be it graphic, aleatoric, open-ended or more classical, will of course be very different from what happens in a free improvisation, if we can really imagine being totally free in improvisation. These two experiences make me happy and transform my relationship with things and with others.
Interview by Michèle Tosi
Article photos © Vincent Beaume
Photos partitions © Loïc Guénin
