Statement of Intent for "Bruits Blancs" by Emmanuel Vigier

"I’m returning to Vichy, my hometown, with microphones.
And a silent archive: an interview about the Occupation, the audio of which has been lost. This time, I’ve made up my mind—I want to give it a voice again.
The archive is at the heart of my work. It’s the starting point. It’s through the archive that I weave a narrative and unfold it. Its nature gives it its form.
9:20 a.m.: *Divorce* was a piece born from a diary found on the street and built using recordings preserved on audio cassettes. This time, still in collaboration with Géry Petit, sound designer and musician, we worked with an entirely different, more abstract material, as if all memory had been erased: white noise with little variation, yet undeniably ambiguous. Just as the memory of Vichy always is—the place and the regime associated with it, which clings to it like a second skin. For two years, we worked with the past and its echoes." — Emmanuel Vigier

"Given the title of our work, sound immediately comes to mind. This white noise—which, because it encompasses all audible frequencies, is the realm of infinite possibilities—is first and foremost a sound of the past, of radio archives, that resonate and haunt our present. This white noise lies behind and between the words. It also refers to Vichy, where the story unfolds. Gentle and soothing, like the sound of rivers and springs, it can also be found in the city’s hotels and their rhythms. To achieve this, alternatives to traditional microphones—geophones and hydrophones—prove particularly useful here. Yet, as its volume increases, white noise becomes a source of illegibility. With it, the message becomes garbled and incomprehensible; meaning no longer emerges. An investigation “unfolds.”" — Géry Petit