Big8
Set

Today, Grand8 mainly brings together musicians from Marseille and the surrounding area, with a few members from further afield (Nantes, Crest, Brussels, Berlin). They have come together around the crucial and major idea of playing music, improvised, in a large ensemble, with the awareness of an orchestra.
Singularity and difference, similarity and agreement are there for everyone to build and make: Grand8 could be likened to a kind of sound organism, a body born of the sum of a whole. Like the vital systems of the human body, it allows individual and shared energies to circulate. It jubilantly combines organic, living music, opening itself up to, and exchanging with, what surrounds it.
Listening takes center stage. It guides and enables a balance between meticulous construction and spontaneity, between mastery and randomness, between orchestral organization and its transgression. The object escapes individual control, but remains under collective control. Everyone is responsible for the whole, and everyone is in love with freedom. An experience of the individual in the whole and the whole in the individual. Grand8 likes to take paths that emphasize the journey rather than the destination. The idea of "without a conductor" forces musicians to build a common ground, while being willing, adventurous, curious and rigorous. Speech becomes abundant and collegial. It is essential to evoke music, human functioning and organizational choices.
Beyond the parameters of music, sound and their treatment, the ensemble addresses questions of space, body, movement and presence. It spatializes sound, and choreographs space with relish.
Grand8 also speaks of musical emancipation, questioning beyond music itself the organization of a group of individuals. He is committed to seeking parity between musicians and musicians, whatever their tool or practice. It is a counterpoint to the economic context that too often forces us to think in terms of smaller musical ensembles.

Gaëlle Rouard
Filmmaker

Hand filmmaker since 1992. Graduated from the École Supérieure d'Art Visuel de Genève in 1996. Gaëlle Rouard trained at 102 rue d'Alembert (a venue dedicated to the dissemination of experimental music and film) and at Atelier MTK (an artisanal film laboratory) in Grenoble. She has developed and continues to explore various film processing methods, while at the same time working as an instrumentalist on a 16 mm projector through her participation in various improvisation groups and as a soloist.
She also works with universities and artists' collectives to run practical film workshops (ranging from working without a camera to setting up a permanent laboratory).