GEOGRAPHIC WORDS

Using the intimacy of a small venue and the audience’s proximity as his inspiration, Herman Kolgen creates an audio geographic performance that imagines the audience as a sonic territory to be navigated, explored and integrated. The artist sits in the centre of the room, while some of the spectators hold mini-loudspeakers in their hands. He creates sonic climates that integrate with or rupture the intimacy of the disembodied voices that emanate from the mini-loudspeakers located within the audience. These climates, emanating from a second sound system at the room’s periphery, create a sonic envelope around the artist and the audience. Words, phrases, and disembodied and temporally dislocated poetic narratives in two tongues mingle within this climate of domestic and abstract sounds to take flight across an evocative yet ambiguous territory of emotion and meaning, where the spoken and the heard become the experienced.

This premier of Géographic Words at La Société de Curiosités de Paris is a presentation of a work in progress.  Dominique Godderis and Martina Scotti are the voices for this performance: the words they speak are a blend of their own and words written by Herman Kolgen.