The Sion Groove Sessions

The Sion Groove Sessions, 2023

(A Few Poetry Lectures Recorded on Pottery)

Performed installation, 4 hours, from 12:00 to 14:00 and 15:00 to 16:30

In collaboration with Charlotte Centelighe, ceramist, and Mathilde Morel, vocal performer

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Sound is a vibration that propagates like a wave through a gas, liquid or solid. In 1877, Thomas Edison developed the first method for recording sound: a stylus engraved sound waves on a cylinder wrapped in tin foil. The same stylus, mounted on a diaphragm and amplified by a bell, was used to read and hear the recorded sounds. A century later, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Georges Charpak, recalling that sound waves are capable of creating grooves in soft matter, suggested that they could have an impact on clay. And he dreamed of inventing a tool that would enable us to hear sounds recorded on the grooves of ancient pottery, perhaps even the songs that accompanied their creation.The performance created in Guadalajara in 2010, was inspired to Saâdane Afif by Georges Charpak's project.

In one room, a potter's wheel, two loudspeakers facing it, and empty pedestals. A poster on the wall announces an event on the opening night program: "a reading, a recording and a few witnesses". Behind the glass of a booth, the performer speaks into the microphone texts that Saâdane Afif has commissioned from other artists around his own pieces since 2004. In the recording room, where the audience is also seated, her voice is amplified by the loudspeakers, superimposed on the ceramist's work. And if Charpak's theory is to be believed, the waves are imprinted on the damp earth as it turns on its lathe. For each new song, the ceramist starts a new pot: the only decoration is a glaze on the lip of each pot, inscribed with an identification number, the title of the recorded lyrics, the date of composition, the author's initials, the name of the ceramist/sound engineer and the place and date of recording. After firing in the EDHEA laboratories, the pottery is returned to La Centrale for display.

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Photo © Biennale Son / Olivier Lovey