Vincent Barras

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Vincent Barras presents 5 projects at the Son 2 Biennale

Projects by, about and with John Cage, Dieter Roth, Caroline de Cornière, Michèle Métail, Thierry Raboud & Lucien Mullener, Cia Rinne, Jonathan Dumani, Olivier Cadiot, Julien d'Abrigeon, Laura Vazquez

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Empty Words by John Cage

Performance by Vincent Barras
La Centrale, Sion
From September 26, 2025 at 7:20 p.m. to September 27, 2025 at 7:24 a.m.

Empty Words, by the North American artist John Cage (1912-1992), active in music, dance, visual arts, writing and ecology, was composed between 1973 and 1975. This work, for solo voice accompanied by projections of Thoreau's drawings, very rarely performed because of its radical and extreme character, is designed to be performed, according to Cage's indications, from dusk to dawn, in four parts of 2 hours each, separated by 30-minute pauses. It uses a mixture of words, syllables and letters taken by chance from the Diary of Henry David Thoreau, the 19th-century American philosopher.

Empty Words aims, according to the composer, to abolish the boundary between language and music, through a long process of transformation. "What can you do with language? Use it as a material. Material of five kinds : letters, syllables, words, phrases, sentences. A text for a song can be a vocalise : just letters. Can be just syllables, just words ; just a string of phrases ; sentences. Or combinations of lettres and syllables (for example, letters and words, et cetera… Part I eliminates sentences; Part II also excludes phrases; Part III omits words; Part IV admits only letters and silences."(Empty Words - Writings '73-'78, Wesleyan University Press, 1980).

During the performance, Empty Words gradually reveals itself as a poem in which the semantic elements of language gradually dissolve into their sonic materiality, thwarting semantic mechanisms and sensory cues, achieving a "demilitarization of language." By evacuating the charge of full meaning, the "empty words" transform their own expressive potentialities into pure sonic events, becoming, for the audience, bearers of all possible meanings: "a language that can be loved without being understood."

For the performer, and for the audience: Search (out loud) for a way to read, or to listen. Change frequency. Go up and then down: go to extremes. Make music while reading aloud. Read. Breathe. Make it so, until the language says nothing at all. Stand there all night reading, or listening. Until dawn, when the music of the language and the outside sounds interpenetrate. By morning, the language has become music.

The performance will also be streamed. For the audience, it will include a mushroom tasting (and other macrobiotic cuisine products, based on recipes by John Cage) during the three breaks, in collaboration with the Valais Cantonal Mycology Association, which has its stamm (for the Sion section) at the Chandoline Power Station.

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John Cage Archives

Exhibition curated by Vincent Barras

Photographs, scores, books, covers, various publications, allow the public to become better acquainted with the multifaceted artist (musician, poet, visual artist, essayist, mycologist) that was John Cage (1012-1992), whose influence on the arts today remains unparalleled.

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Rotor

Sound creation based on Dieter Roth's autobiography of 5c years

Rotor , a sound piece, was created specifically for the Biennale Son 2, as part of the exhibition of sound works presented on this occasion at the Centrale, the former Chandoline power plant. It is placed alongside the four other sound booths, which all present works that explore the relationship between language, orality, writing and sound projection.

Rotor is based on theautobiography of 5c years, a long, hallucinatory narrative by Swiss artist Dieter Roth, written in 1980 and published in the French translation by Vincent Barras in 2021 for the magazine L'Ours blanc, as well as on the poetic work of the artist, who was, as editor and author, one of the central figures of the concrete poetry movement in the 1950s-60s.

Within Roth's proliferating, swirling, and seemingly chaotic oeuvre, the question of sound and music is central. Rotor , a sound creation, focuses on this little-known aspect of Roth's work, drawing in particular on the artist's poetic output.

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corps entiers 

Performance for dancer and speaker
Caroline de Cornière (dance) / Vincent Barras (lyrics)
Sound broadcast: Thierry Simonot

La Centrale, Sion
October 26, 2025, 12-18h

corps entiers, a performance by Vincent Barras and Caroline de Cornière, is the utopian desire to express the whole body through the simultaneous and combined means of verbal language(speaking) and gestural language(dancing). The performance takes place over a long period (6 hours), so that the audience can experience the ongoing history of their own bodies. Thierry Simonot's sound and light effects underline and expand this double discourse.

talk

full body is an uninterrupted conference, improvised at the very moment it takes place, which began at nightfall and will end at dawn, or vice versa, depending on the season, the place and the event in which it is part. The word is created as the speech progresses, with no other support than the memory of the speaker's body, which exposes in a speech organized in real time, as the performance unfolds, all of what he knows, imagines, is capable of saying about the body.

to dance

Corps entiers is an uninterrupted, improvised dance, which began at nightfall and will end at daybreak or vice versa, depending on the season, the place and the event in which it is part. The dance is created through movement, with no other support than the memory of the dancer's body, which brings together in a choreography organized in real time, as the performance unfolds, everything she goes through, remembers stories and her practices of the body in movement.

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la poésie s'honore

Sound-poetic performances curated by Vincent Barras
Fondation Louis-Moret, Martigny
Sunday, November 30, 2025, 3-8pm

la poésie s'honore invites and interweaves Swiss and international authors whose artistic practice is inspired by orality and the question of sound, to create sound poetry and poetry-action performances: Michèle Métail (F), Thierry Raboud (CH), Cia Rinne (D-S), Jonathan Dumani (CH), Olivier Cadiot (CH), Julien d'Abrigeon (CH),Laura Vazquez (F) + 1-2 poets to be confirmed.

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Vincent Barras

Born in 1956
Based in Geneva

Vincent Barras received literary, musical, and medical training in Geneva, Paris, and London, and taught at the University of Lausanne (history of medicine and science) and at HEAD Geneva (sound). He pursues research on the history of the body, medicine and science, music, poetry, and contemporary arts, while simultaneously developing work in sound creation, writing and translation, sound poetry, and performance.

He creates installations, concerts and creations in various locations in Switzerland, Europe, North and South America, solo or with choreographers, musicians, dancers, authors and visual artists.

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John Cage 

(1912-1992)

American composer, poet and visual artist, a key figure in contemporary music and, more broadly, in the artistic avant-garde, not to mention his work as a poet and thinker. Open to Eastern philosophical thought, he was at the origin of numerous musical experiments, such as prepared piano and aleatoric music, and concepts such as indeterminacy, the role of silence and chance in art. He was one of the inspirers of the Fluxus movement, was at the origin of happening, and composed the music of choreographer Merce Cunningham, his companion. Today, his influence extends far beyond music, and remains a major force in contemporary art, dance and the wider cultural landscape.

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Dieter Roth

or Diter Rot, (1930-1998)

Contemporary Swiss artist of German origin. Born in Hanover, he moved to Zurich in 1943. After an apprenticeship as a graphic designer in Berne, he developed a prolific career as a publisher, poet, sculptor, painter and musician, working between Copenhagen, Reykjavik, the United States, London and Düsseldorf, making him one of the most versatile and versatile of artists. In 2014, Edizioni Periferia published a boxed set featuring the essence of his musical and sound work, central to his polymorphous artistic activity: Dieter Roth und die Musik. His "complete works"(books and graphic work) appeared in 40 volumes at the end of the 20th century.‍

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Caroline de Cornière

Born in 1972
Based in Geneva

Caroline de Cornière trained in classical and contemporary dance in Caen. Studied modern literature at the University of Rennes, then dance at the CNDC in Angers. She danced with J.Fiadeiro in Lisbon, then with the F. Berger in Lausanne. Settling in Geneva, she joined the Alias company in 1996, where she worked for ten years as a performer, assistant, mediator and costume designer. In 2007, she founded the C2C company, and has since been developing her own projects in performance, installation and choreography, including: Correspondance, Théâtre du Galpon, Geneva, May-June 2023; Accorps, Compagnie Bleue, Geneva, September 2023; Seule.s en scène, Pavillon ADC, Geneva, November-December 2023. The recital premiere is scheduled for November 2025 at Théâtre du Grütli.

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Thierry Simonot 

Born in 1969
Based in Geneva

Sound engineer, creator of spatialization and sound diffusion devices, sound installations, including the AMEG 0rchestra of loudspeakers, he collaborates as a stage manager and sound designer in various festivals and contemporary music groups.

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Michèle Métail

Born in 1950
Based in Lassale

Poet and artist, a major figure in the sound and experimental poetry movement. Winner of the Prix d'Honneur Bernard Heidsieck-CentrePompidou in 2018. She produces "oral publications" for a wide range of performances and exhibitions, and is the author of numerous publications published by Presses du réel and other publishers.

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Thierry Raboud & Lucien Mullener

Born in 1987
Based in Corseaux

Thierry Raboud, poet, musician and literary critic, studied at the Universities of Lausanne and Fribourg and at the HEM in Lausanne. Recipient of a Leenaards Foundation grant; since 2022, president of the Swiss Literature Jury. Publications, performances and installations, including "Désastronautes" (with V. Decamp) in Lausanne, Lucens and Locarno, and "Quand la dernière feuille" (with Y. Bonvin Rey) at the Fondation Louis Moret, Martigny.

Born in 1999
Based in Fribourg

Lucien Mullener, a Swiss drummer who studied jazz at the Fribourg Conservatory and then at the Haute école de musique de Lausanne (HEMU), is active in numerous contemporary music ensembles, combining jazz, electronic music and experimental music.

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Cia Rinne

Born in 1973
Based in Berlin

Cia Rinne is the author of visual and sound poetry, as well as experimental and conceptual pieces at the interface of theater, music and philosophy. Her polyglot work plays on the materiality of language, the effects of meaning and wordplay, and takes on its full dimension in the form of performance. Numerous publications, including L'usage du mot, revue L'Ours blanc, éditions Héros-Limite,Geneva 2017.

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Olivier Cadiot

Born in 1956
Based in Paris

Writer, concerned by the question of listening, sound and music, author of performances with various musicians, and of numerous poetic, theatrical and novel works published by Éditions P.O.L., including the recent Départs de feu (2025).

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Jonathan Dumani aka AbSTRAL compost

Born in 1983
Based in La Chaux-de-Fonds

Poet and writer, practicing rap, slam, sound poetry and writing. Numerous concerts and performances in Switzerland and abroad. Publications in the form of books, CDs and LPs, including the recent Le vrai Visage de la pluie, published by La Veilleuse, Lausanne.

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Laura Vazquez

Born in 1986
Based in Marseille

French poet and writer. Resident of the Villa Médicis in Rome. Founder of the poetry magazine Muscle. Numerous readings, performances and publications in magazines and books, including Vous êtes de moins en moins réels, an anthology of her poems (éditions du Seuil, 2022). Winner of the Prix Wepler in 2021, and the Prix Goncourt de la poésie in 2022 for her body of work.

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Julien d'Abrigeon

Born in 1973
Based in Montélimar

Poet and writer, he practices action-poetry, sound, visual and digital poetry. Member of the BoXoN collective, which published the magazine of the same name in Lyon. He created the T.A.P.I.N. (1998) and tapin² (2014) websites, dedicated to contemporary poetry "outside the book". Numerous performances in France and abroad.