Il y a, ensuite

This sound installation is adapted to the space of the gallery, with its own very specific configuration in an open corridor on the ground floor and two symmetrical listening stations in the basement. This creates the conditions for a uniquely personal sonic and psychological experience, triggering memories and thoughts, between reality and fiction, listening and reading, music and words. The installation is a two-voice piece. A first voice, that of a child, draws a sound portrait of a landscape composed of small snatches of descriptions, strangely laid down like little memories; this is the ‘there was’ of the piece. A woman’s voice is interspersed between the fragments, in the moments of silence, repeating the word ‘then’. She seems to force the child’s memory to manifest itself in words. These two utterances, superposed on a musical background, cross paths without ever meeting or answering each other, as if no longer knowing what the memories correspond to. Because of this reference to the memory, reminiscences and dreams, the sound pieces by Petitgand create an interesting narrative field of tension. Orchestrated during editing, their dialogue is itself a meditation on the continuation of memory. Or rather on its frontiers, because There was Then ends with the words ‘I don’t remember afterwards.’