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Esprits de Paris

by Mike Kelley & Scanner

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about

Esprits de Paris is the soundtrack to a unique installation that American artist Mike Kelley (1954 – 2012) and I created for Sonic Process: A New Geography of Sounds at Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2002.

The installation was a 12-screen intermedia installation in a special constructed wooden structure. It’s a very unusual work in my catalogue of works since it uses no instruments, or any traditional sounds at all. In fact, it features the result of a series of recordings of visual and sound environments done in different parts of Paris. The recordings, made at places to which supposedly supernatural characteristics have been attributed, are presented as documentary records, while images recorded at a club full of people dancing were projected in the museum space. In this work, sound experimentation is combined with an application of the method which William S Burroughs, in his work The Invisible Generation, describes as “the control machine.”

It's a musical homage to the pioneering researchers of the Electronic Voice Phenomena: Friedrich Jürgenson, Konstantin Raudive, and Attila von Szalay. The term EVP refers to “voices,” generally assumed to be those of the dead, discovered in ambient audio recordings. These three men, working in Sweden, Germany, and the United States respectively, are the most famous of the psychic researchers who attempted to communicate with the dead through electronic means rather than through the traditional human medium. Such attempts date back to the twenties, but EVP research reached a wider audience with the publication of Raudive’s book Breakthrough in 1971. Emulating the techniques of the EVP researchers, we isolated, slowed down and looped, anomalous sounds found in ambient recordings. However, instead of seeking the voices of the dead, we searched out the ghost in the machine, working with anomalies found on blank digital minidiscs. So, what you actually hear are highly amplified recordings of ‘nothing,’ curated into a long form work.

The additional 7” single edit was our playing on the fact that albums always needed a hit single. So we sped up the entire album to the length of a pop single, though I don’t think the charts are ready for it as yet!

With the tragic death of Mike Kelley in 2021 I’ve taken on the role, in association with the Kelley Studio in the USA, of ensuring this work is seen again. As such it is now part of the permanent part of the collection of Centre Pompidou in Paris and will be on display in the near future for everyone to experience again.

Other artists in the show were Doug Aitken, Mathieu Briand, Coldcut, Richard Dorfmeister, Flow Motion, Renée Green, Johan Grimonprez, Martí Guixé, Rupert Huber, Gabriel Orozco and David Shea.

credits

released May 7, 2002

Written and produced by Robin Rimbaud and Mike Kelley

Commissioned for SONIC PROCESS: A New Geography of Sounds
Centre Pompidou Paris / MACBA Barcelona
Conception: Laetitia Rouiller,
Project curator: Christine Van Assche
2002

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about

Scanner London, UK

Robin Rimbaud - Scanner is an artist and composer working in London. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sonic art, producing concerts, installations and recordings. His work has been presented throughout the United States, South America, Asia, Australia and Europe. ... more

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