NATIONAL DAYS OF ARCHITECTURE 2023

Julia Hanadi Al Abed and Laurent Tixador present The voice of his ghostAn acoustic performance based on a batch of old records that can only be played on Gramophones. The performance takes place on Big Stump the giant rusticated stump by artist Stéphane Vigny. Vigny is also taking advantage of the architecture days to present a new piece Spanish Renaissance installed in the Chapelle Saint-Léger.

Julia Hanadi Al Abed & Laurent Tixador The voice of his ghost
78rpm / 35Kg / acoustic performance
"A batch of old records was discovered during a move. Playable only on Gramophones, a mechanical system that uses no source of energy other than a spring wound by a crank, they are very similar to the Siberian mammoths that are resurfacing as the permafrost melts, having disappeared at the end of the last ice age, and now an entire extinct species is appearing to tell us about the tragic consequences of global warming. Similarly, 35 kg of shellac, a resin secreted by an Asian cochineal and once used as a plastic, has for the last 80 years or so concealed jazz recordings with a spectral timbre. Exhumed from their gangue by a bygone mechanism that consumes nothing, they come back to haunt us at precisely the moment when questions are being asked about energy supply".
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Stéphane Vigny / Big Stump + Spanish Renaissance
Big Stump is a monumental rustic sculpture reproducing the stump of a giant sequoia. The starting point for this project by artist Stéphane Vigny was the discovery of an archive illustration: the image shows the stump of a giant sequoia in California that has just been felled, on which several dozen people are dancing. In the book Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California (1862), a commentator of the time, James M. Hutchings, describes the following scene: "Incredible as it may seem, on this stump, July 4, 1854, thirty-two persons began to dance four sets of cotillions at once, without any inconvenience; and beside them were musicians and spectators."
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