Dompter les rivières (Tame the rivers) is a multi-faceted, polyphonic, geo-localised soundwalk that takes you on a stroll through the many facets of Wacken, a patchwork district undergoing constant change.

A guiding character, inspired by the Tunisian fortune-teller who was present at the 1924 colonial exhibition, takes us through centuries and spaces. She allows us to navigate between her present, our present, and a more distant future (2123). Her voice intersects with others that are more neutral, factual, passionate, poetic or political. Dompter les rivières is also the story of a place that stages itself according to the ideologies that inhabit it. A wild place, veined with water, which little by little, from one narrative to the next, gives way to a utilitarian environment, completely under control.
But beneath the backdrop of this perpetual comedy, the water is always flowing peacefully, looking for the right gaps to gush out.

A soundwalk available on the dedicated application – GOH

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Illustration: ©Valérie Etterlen

DOCUMENTARY . WORKERS . VESTIGES

12+ years old

Duration: 60 / 90 minutes

The face of cities depends on the direction they look. Villerupt now looks towards Luxembourg, towards the border. The heart around which it was built has emptied and its arteries send its flow over there, on the other side. The heart is to be rebuilt, from a common memory. And lost moments of the Saisons Invisibles (invisible seasons).

Hélène Gaudy is a novelist; Christina Kubisch is a composer. Inspired by the history of the town of Villerupt, on the French-Luxembourg border, and the stories of its inhabitants, they created The Invisible Seasons. 

This journey tells the story of the region: the landscape shaped by the mines and the emptiness that remains today. It is an image of people, of the various successive waves of immigration; but also of the territory and of the nearby borders, which define the work today. A multiplicity of stories, moments and memories obtained thanks to the testimonies of the inhabitants, who dialogue with the written text: points of view that intersect and complement each other.

The Invisible Seasons was created as part of the In the field project, for Esch2022, European Capital of Culture.

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POETRY . MEMORY . BIOGRAPHIES

16+ years old

Duration: 30 / 45 min

Participants enter the mine as if entering a mouth. A dark den, where the wind makes the barbed wire creak like ropes and the crematoria echo with a dull lament.

La mine est une bouche (‘The mine is a mouth‘) takes you into the dark depths of the Tiercelet mines in Thil, where, during the Second World War, Jewish deportees and Soviet resistance fighters were forced to undertake hard labour by the Nazis to manufacture V1 missiles.

It is the story of these bodies that writer Marina Skalova and composer Jacob Kirkegaard tell through this sound and poetic creation, which probes the traces left by the war and seeks to translate them into physical experience.

Outside the mine, the trail continues to the former site of the Thil concentration camp, where six poems bring out the unspeakable in the remains of history.

La mine est une bouche was created as part of the In the field project for Esch2022, European Capital of Culture.

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