Project

During his research on chiaroscuro, plastic artist Raphaël Thierry developed a sand-manipulation technique. Through the means of a backlit glass panel, he obtain highly precise contrast and very fine granularity.

Totem di Sabbia is a duet performance by Raphaël Thierry and Sylvain Lemêtre. It comprises in a succession of appearances and disappearances: bodies, masks, silhouettes emerging out of nothingness, executed on the spot and instantly destroyed. Presented by the means of a video device placed over the plastic artist’s table, his most minute manipulations are projected overhead.

Echoing the gesture of the creator, Sylvain Lemêtre stands before a table on which he enables variously colored instruments to enter in resonance. Bells, plates, gongs, Tibetan bowls and other drums, their skin stretched or sanded: the instrumentarium is “augmented” by a sound amplification device the musician controls. Linked to the matter manipulated by the plastic artist, this appliance creates an interface, helping define a dialogue between to senses, visual and hearing. Both artists are then linked: by their gestures, by the physical practice of their respective instruments; but also by the instantaneous, temporary and passing dimension of the work they bring to life, and death, instantaneously.

The spectator is therefore immerged in succeeding universes: abstract, primitive, modern, rhythmic… Visual and musical scales cross and intertwine, move in the immediacy of improvisation. A rhythm is born, a semi-visual, semi-sonorous danse.

Totem di Sabbia interrogates beyond sensitive experience, beyond questions of identity, trace, or length of the artistic work. The choice of improvisation in Raphaël Thierry’s manipulations and Sylvain Lemêtre’s rhythms interrogates the role of the spectator, which is not fixed, but, on the contrary, open and inviting. Throwing into question the hierarchy between visual and musical disciplines, Totem di Sabbia opens the possibility of dialogue and interrogates the spectator on what triggers attention, producing a particular way of listening and viewing.

Programme

Musical and visual performance

Improvisations from

Sylvain Lemêtre : zarb, percussions

Raphaël Thierry : sand painting