Dominique Petitgand: Nearly total listening, 1992/2015
A solo project by Dominique Petitgand
gb agency, at Level One
From May 28 to June 13, 2015
Listening space for seated audience
This near total performance is an experience and a rarity: a one-time opportunity to hear the near totality of works I’ve produced over the last several years. The sound is presented in a listening space where the audience is seated and can hear work lasting more than four hours following a narrative thread in non-chronological order, punctuated by silences and in short and stereo versions, and using sounds and spoken words.
Whereas each element was made using the same material (mainly voices) and the same procedures for recording and editing, each is also a unique and singular piece revealing narrative characteristics and formal diversity.
Dominique Petitgand
Exhibition view, 1992/2015
Nearly total listening
Photo Aurélien Mole
Dominique Petitgand
Exhibition view, 1992/2015
Nearly total listening
Photo Aurélien Mole
The motive for the project, aside from its retrospective aspect, is the anticipation of the impact—different for each listener—that such a collection and duration of listening to similar voices, sounds and musical atmospheres will produce. The elements which have been edited, taken apart, and reorganized, become an evolving and open ended story that is obsessive and complex, multi-layered and ebullient. Fragments of stories, monologues, not quite dialogues, descriptions, exhalations, dreams like nightmares, landscapes, and miniatures succeed one another.
The setup of the listening space allows everyone to choose their listening duration, taking into account the fragmentary, clustered and interminable aspects of the exhibition.
Dominique Petitgand, 2015