Belval, Esch-sur-Alzette - Les Ensembles 2.2

Acid Reine Cie.

Illustration: ©Valérie Etterlen

Details

Available until december 2023

Organiser:

Esch2022

Location

Belval, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg




Start :
8 Porte de France, Belval


10 years old +
Duration : 30 / 45 minutes

SCIENCE-FICTION . ANTICIPATION . DATA

10 years old +

Duration : 30 / 45 minutes

Welcome to Belval, home of the Acid-Reine company, the most promising digital company of recent years. Why exactly did you come here? And what do you know about the Acid-Reine company?

In this futuristic soundtrack, an innovative company offers to recycle your digital data into almost unlimited green energy. But this success is tinged with mystery: of the two founders of the company, one went mad, and the other disappeared in unexplained circumstances…

The story invites us to ‘cross the border’: between the visible and the invisible, the real and the imaginary; between Belval and the rest of the world. The musical composition conveys the strangeness of the neighbourhood: a modern, changing, multi-layered place on the borders of the unreal.

Acid-Reine Cie. was created as part of the In the field project for Esch2022, European Capital of Culture.

The creation

Belval is a delimited space, a place rich in history, which does not leave much room for the imaginary, for wandering, for the margin, for the unfinished. This gave the authors the desire to propose a counter-narrative, to imagine the other side of the scenery.

Thus, the neighbourhood served as a place of embodiment for the text, setting its shape and limits. The geography of the streets structured the narrative, imposed chapters, divisions, breathing spaces, a dividing line. This transposition of the fictional universe into the real world also served as a backdrop for the various themes of the story: data processing, the relationship between the digital and the living, the abuses of new technologies, etc.

The musical compositions convey the strangeness emanating from Belval. A modern, changing, multi-layered place, but one that seems to float permanently on the edge of unreality, where it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between what is authentic and what is not, what is ‘finished’ and what is being built. A feeling that strongly coloured the music.

Belval is a place of visible traces, of sounds that are interpreted rather than identified. The composers wanted to play with this boundary by proposing ultra-worked sounds which nevertheless seem perfectly natural or by using almost raw recordings which, out of context, seem completely stylised. If you listen carefully, certain sounds seem to stand out, but each time, something sows a seed of doubt…

The artists

Sebastian Dicenaire was born in Alsace, and now works in Brussels. Writer, poet, author of radio fiction and podcasts, he uses language both in writing and through sound and video. He has published works of poetry (Döner-kebab, ed. Héros-Limite; Personnologue, ed. Clou dans le fer; Dernières Nouvelles de l’Avenir, ed. Atelier de l’agneau… ). In his performances, he tries to push the limits of the spectator’s imagination by encouraging them to create their own ‘mental cinema’, mixing text and sound. His radio fiction blends many genres – poetry and science fiction, mythology and technology – and has won awards at several festivals.

Svië is a duo made up of Gaëtan Gromer and Antoine Spindler, sound artists and composers of electro-acoustic music.

Gaëtan Gromer leads a creative activity at a crossroads between composition, performance and multimedia installation. He uses the astonishing power of suggestion and immersion of sound to deliver a certain view of the world, a particular point of hearing, to ‘tell’ with sound. He is one of the winners of the Imagina Atlantica 2012 European Digital Arts Prize in Angoulême and wrote the music for Samuel Henry’s Juste l’embrasser, which won the SABAM prize at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival in 2008.

Antoine Spindler is a violist and teacher at the Haute école des Arts du Rhin. A member of the Ethos Quartet and the Plurium Ensemble, he has also played with the Linéa Ensemble and the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra. He has performed on several stages, including the Festival Musica in Strasbourg, the Tonhalle in Zurich and the Asian-Pacific Contemporary Music Festival in Seoul, South Korea. He specialises in electroacoustic and mixed music, notably with the Live.Animated.Orchestra or as a member of the Jafta trio.

Soutiens

With the support of Esch2022, European Capital of Culture, as well as the French Ministry of Culture, the DRAC Grand Est, the Région Grand Est, the Centre National de la Musique, the Collectivité Européenne d’Alsace, the Département Meurthe-et-Moselle, the Ville d’Esch-sur-Alzette, the Ville et Eurométropole de Strasbourg, the LISER (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research), the Musica Festival and the Puzzle Thionville.

In partnership with Residhome Luxembourg and the Cottage Luxembourg.