Vive Les Fantômes is a radio play created for German station SWR in 2018, it is my first step into radioart. The work is based on snippets of interviews, rehearsals and performances by people whose work had an influence on my artistic path: Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Jacques Derrida, Chris Marker and many more. The process involved searching, discovering and creating connections among the material and resulted in a network of sound-objects that appear repeatedly changing their shape throughout the piece. Communication is constructed across different rooms and times, beyond the borders of language and music. Vive Les Fantômes is not only a piece of music, it's rather acoustic cinema with a non-linear narrative layer organized by scenes.

Samples pulled from live jazz performances played a central role. At various points it’s not clear if the musicians are still checking their instruments, or if it is already considered as part of the coming piece: an enormous feedback, then drums begin to play, and there seems to be a moment of hesitation before the ensemble starts off full on. There are sounds of people in the audience talking in the distance, their applause, and singular clapping. All these represent moments or aspects of what a moment can be: A complex situation of interactions that happened just here in this one particular moment, that will never be repeated. But we can play the recording of it. We can repeat aspects of this moment and play with them, which is what Vive Les Fantômes does.

I went back to when the music was created. Time traveling, I enjoyed looking into these moments over and over again, discovering their secrets and hidden sounds and interacting with them.

French philosopher Jacques Derrida answers the phone repeating the same words in various scenes. Before picking up, he mentions that a ghost is calling (le fantôme). Sometimes we hear the philosopher simply listening. .......
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