Lauren Tortil

Listening Bar

Listening Bar is a situation performed by Lauren Tortil, inspired by the eponymously-named Japanese audiophile bars that the artist discovered during her visits to Japan in 2023 and 2024. These bars - small, windowless and dimly lit - invite a dozen or so consumers to sip their drinks in silence, while listening together to music selected by the owner of the premises, played through a pair of high-quality speakers. The configuration of the venue and its small capacity make this a perfect setting for an active, shared listening experience, while at the same time inviting listeners to remain silent. While silence fully contributes to concentration and joint attention, the proposed situation plays on sound perceptions through superimposition: the presence of consumers and the activity of the barmaid preparing cocktails (crushed ice, shaker, etc.) mingle with the audio recordings broadcast. This situation is akin to the experience of a real-time sound montage made up of recorded sound sources and improvised acoustic sources. A sound montage that calls for two simultaneous listenings: that of the recordings (schizophonic listening) and that of the acoustic space.

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Please Listen to This

Please Listen to This is a performance project staging a collective sound orchestration in public and urban spaces. This so-called mediated orchestration is deployed in the space with the help of some fifteen performers and the public, equipped with audio headphones, who both receive real-time instructions recorded via an application on their smartphones. Through a process of transmission, this performance proposes to federate a group of people by means of headphones - a technology initially for individual use that favors withdrawal - in order to offer them a sensitive experience based on heightened attention to their environment.

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Lauren Tortil

Born in 1986
Based in Paris

Lauren Tortil is a sound artist and doctoral student at Eur CAPS in Rennes. Influenced by sound studies and media archaeology, she is interested in listening processes through the prism of sound technologies and the environments they generate. Her approach - which also incorporates a visual and sculptural component - is reflected in the iconographic and theoretical research that feeds her protean plastic practice: performances, installations, printed objects... He is the author of the book Une généalogie des grandes oreilles, Tombolo Presses, 2019. Her work is regularly shown in France, including at the FRAC Ile-de-France, Bétonsalon, Centre Pompidou, Pernod Ricard and Louis Vuitton Foundations, ADAGP, Villa du Parc in Annemasse; and abroad at the Musée d'art de Joliette, Canada; the Igloo Sound Gallery in Jihlava; the 11th São Paulo Architecture Biennial... In 2024, she was awarded the Villa Kujoyama with the support of the French Institute, the French Institute of Japan and the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation.