Claire Frachebourg

HIRs (2024 - ∞)

Sound performance

Claire Frachebourg has superimposed the map of the Herens and Hérémence valleys on that of the serpent constellation, placing serpentinite blocks in each locality. These blocks, split and open like books, are comparable to snake eggs, the bearers of creation myths. Slices taken from each one are brought together under the ancient tunnel of the Pyramides d'Euseigne, tall columns of earth topped with blocks of stone, shaped by glacial erosion. The serpentinite that caps the Pyramids has traveled from the seabed to the sky, carrying with it the vibratory resonance of its history. The work, inaugurated on September 21, 2024, will be activated by a sound performance at each autumn equinox.

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Claire Frachebourg

Born in 1988
Lives and works in Valais

A multi-disciplinary artist who graduated in 2012 from TIP (performance school in Freiburg im Breisgau), then in 2021 from EDHEA (École de design et Haute école d'art du Valais), iel is interested in rifts, holes and spaces that generate new resonances, relationships and ways of being in the world through situated listening. Her research focuses on the imaginary generated by changes in physical and temporal scale. ClaireFrachebourg explores the hidden potential of encounters and the imperceptible voices that surround us. HIRs is a project based on her explorations in the mountains and her sensory relationship with stone.

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Lifeboat, 2023

Sound installation presented at the 1st edition of Biennale Son

Construction: Atelier Nolan Gosparini
Lighting: Lauriane Tissot

Claire Frachebourg installed her Lifeboat in what she calls "the building's breathing space. Sound, a "social fluid", mixes exterior and interior. Starting with a sculpture placed vertically in the basement, which resembles both a boat and a mummy, whose fabric is struck by the currents produced by the old factory's ventilation columns, she aims to translate symbols linked to both birth and death. Thus, the shape of the boat evokes a Gothic church as well as the female sex, a cradle as well as a ghost ship, even a whale carcass or a rocket. "The boat preserves what must cross over, what will survive on the other side", promises the artist.

The sound comes from recordings made in the summer of 2023 during a crossing from Iceland to Greenland, during an artist residency on the sailboat Le Knut organized by MaréMotrice. Claire Frachebourg explains that the song comes from an unexpected encounter when the sailboat was suspended for two days in a windless ocean far from the coast.