Blog

Prelude of a spark

The project of the territorial artistic residency "Les invité.es" is an invitation that was made to me in January 2022 by Antoine Hachin, mediation officer at DSN-Scène Nationale de Dieppe. This project is funded by Dieppe Maritime, DSN – Dieppe Scène Nationale, the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs of Haute Normandie, the National Education, and the Cie La Boîte à sel.

The proposed framework is 5 to 6 weeks of funded residencies from December to June 2023 for 5 to 6 artists/technicians from the company. The territorial artistic residencies take place in immersion in a municipality of Dieppe Maritime (the municipality changes every year) and in connection with all the children from its primary and nursery school and, if possible, residents of the municipality. The objective of this residency is to lay the groundwork for a future show aimed at young audiences, which DSN-Dieppe Scène Nationale may eventually co-produce at a later stage. It is a blank slate, with the request for work sessions with the children of the school, and a final presentation that can take the form that the company wishes, exhibition, celebration, small performance, etc.

We are Céline Garnavault, director of performances, and Thomas Sillard, creator and sound plastician, and we decided to take advantage of this beautiful invitation to conduct a new artistic research project around our specialty: the animation of living sound objects. With the particularity of sharing our creative process with the children, while also opening the backstage to interested adults from the municipality. We are accompanied by 4 professionals from the performing arts: the set designer Olivier Droux, the builder Daniel Péraud, the youth author-illustrator Gauthier David, as well as the human beatbox musician L.O.S. who will join us for the last week and the director Luka Merlet who will come to shoot in April and June to write a short documentary film about the project.

I had no project for a young audience in preparation at the time I accepted this proposal. However, I had begun a long-term research project around sound and living objects (shows BLOCK and TRACK and upcoming creations BAD BLOCK and Anatomy), and we wanted, with my creative partner Thomas Sillard, to evolve this research towards autonomous moving objects and a sound work focused on low frequencies and vibration. At a time when research-creation is very difficult (if not impossible) to fund, this invitation was an incredible opportunity for us to bring together the financial, human, and logistical conditions necessary to set up real laboratories of shared research with the audiences around our particular scenic language with living objects.

Within what I call my concrete laboratory, I always start by observing the material, I "muddle" with my team, I spend a lot of time waiting, looking, and it is not easy because at the beginning of a new research there is so little to rely on, sometimes just a direction or two or an image. But I allow myself this form of wandering, of emptiness, of contemplation, of boredom sometimes, because it is there that forms and things are born that will gradually populate my team's workbenches, then our theater.

Then, when the first prototypes appear, or volumes, I seek to test my intuitions: am I the only one to be moved by this object that vibrates when I caress it? To project onto this little servo motor on a board that is wriggling a living and endearing entity? What do other humans see in these composite microcosms with random behaviors, in these gadgets that escape us, resist us, and invent their own life? What does it evoke for them, at 3 years, 7 years, 10 years, 50 years, 70 years? I quickly want to ask these questions to others than the artistic team because I am convinced that the more we are, the more the projects are enriched by our plural identities, the imaginations summoned, the questions posed by our co-dreamers* both young and old (to borrow a term from Emma Mérabet).

It is this dizzying and delicate stage of my creative process that I proposed to unveil and share for 5 weeks with the entire educational team and the children of the school of Tourville-Sur-Arques, but also with the residents (parents of students and curious individuals). What is research? Where does an idea come from? How does a creation adventure begin? And how can sharing this connect us with each other?

With Thomas Sillard, in December 2022 we went to meet the Mayor of the municipality and the residents, we organized a screening of our film "Track, The Echo of the Circuit", it was a way for us to bring everyone into our universe, and to show them the long duration of research in particular. (If we had to do it again, today we would do it differently, we would show short excerpts and take a long time for exchange with the parents because the film was long, there were many small children who were bored, and the parents' expectations were more focused on the residency project which is understandable. A small early journey mistake without any consequences on the future fortunately.)

The next day we had a meeting with the teachers of the school, and we explained to them that we did not yet know exactly what we were going to do, that we were at the stage before the very first spark, before the first concept, even before being able to put clear words on what we were looking for and that we wanted to share this with them and the children: this great blur, this great vertigo, this secret of the birth of something. That for us too it was dizzying, scary and that we realized how crazy this proposal was and the trust we were asking of them, but that we had great confidence in this process that is ours, and that we have already experienced.

I remember the warm exclamation of one of the teachers at the end of our explanation: "It's very clear, it makes me super excited, it's going to be great!" This sentence alone reflects the atmosphere of this school: a project relies on the humans who support it, dream it, live it, and it is important to emphasize how much ours has been able to rely on and unfold thanks to the trust, human warmth, enthusiasm, availability, flexibility, and enthusiasm of the entire educational team of the school Les pt’its mots passants de Tourville-Sur-Arques.

We meet Samuel, Christophe, and Mickaël, the municipal agents with whom the understanding is immediate. They deliver materials to us by tractor and do not hesitate to come see what we are making or to have a coffee with us, we also get a tour of their huge workshop. We feel a bit at home here.

For Gauthier and me, these are the first steps at the school. We put pressure on ourselves and are a bit nervous. We have prepared our sessions for the children, the theme is: "listening to sounds and materials". The workshop is the same for the 5 classes of the school, (even if slightly adapted for the younger ones) because the founding principle of our project is to have everyone go through the same journey and the same artistic experience.

Each session starts in the classroom with a reading, (we are two passionate about children's literature, Gauthier is himself a youth author-illustrator). The first book chosen is the wonderful: "An Idea" by Hervé Tullet. It puts everyone on the same wavelength (I actually read it to the invited team that very morning), we read it in two voices with Gauthier and we discover each other while doing it (because it is new for us to work together), the book tells how ideas come about, and how you have to search search search... and learn to look to find them, and also how it takes work, and how it can simply change the world to give birth to ideas.