Published on : 29/05/2022 – 02:00
For ten years, each in their own way, Félix Blume and Sophie Berger have traveled the world which they listen to, record and recompose in sound pieces like so many windows on the open sea. This week, we give them the floor and above all we listen to them!
When, in 1953, Nicolas Bouvier left with his sidekick Thierry Vernet for Afghanistan and beyond, the Swiss travel writer took with him a Nagra portable recorder, still in prototype state, lent to him by its inventor Stefan Kudelsky. During this mythical journey that he recounts in his equally mythical book “L’Usage du monde”, Nagra will become his sesame, but also the ferment of the precious link that Nicolas Bouvier had with the world, the sounds coming to irrigate more widely his chiselled, fine and sensitive writing.
Until then, this field recording or “field recording” was a practice, an approach reserved only for professionals, ethnomusicologists or audio-naturalists. And then, with the help of technology, capturing the sounds of the outside will be within reach of travelers listening to this song of the world, which they collect, compose and reproduce in a vast polyphony with scientific or artistic accents.
With Félix Blume, travel came into his life when he was soundman on documentaries, often shot abroad. So he started sending us sound postcards from Mali or Venezuela, with the complicity of Arteradio, a pioneering and inventive site for podcasting in France. Then, he began to paint frescoes with his microphones, collecting the cries of street vendors from Mexico City or the subtle dialogue between the deep Amazonian forest, the animals and the men who inhabit it. At the same time, between Mexico City, Brazil and France where he lives in turn, Félix Blume imagines delicate sound installations, in trees in Mexico, forests in Belgium or on pontoons in Thailand, creations that look like an invitation to travel, dialogue and above all listen.
Sophie Berger is 36 years old and places travel at the heart of her sound approach. Trained at the ENSATT (National School of Theater Arts and Techniques), she decided, at the end of her studies in 2012, to go for a three-month walk along the Loire, microphone held and ears wide open. Since then, she has embarked and recorded for three months on a large container ship from Le Havre to China and back. She launched herself as far as Easter Island or Rapa Nui and set sail for the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, in order to bring back the cold and penetrating sound of the wind at such latitudes. An independent sound artist, she embroiders each time sensitive and immersive pieces that leave a lot of room for silence and the imagination of elsewhere.
Talking about their work and their listening and sound recording position, these two Frenchmen, wanderers of the airwaves, tell us about their travels and their use of sound in their own world.
To go and listen further :
– The sound creations of Sophie Berger
– On “field recording”, Alexandre Galand’s book “Field recording, the sound use of the world in 100 albums”published by Éditions “Le mot et le reste” is a valuable resource
– Extend the trip with Monica Fantini, craftsman of sounds and creation with “Ecouter le monde” broadcast on RFI.
Listening to the world is also an internet platform that aims to share and edit the sounds of the world, echoes of our daily lives, our territories and our humanity. More info here.
– For all mobile and sensitive ears, Arteradio, French site pioneer of the podcasthas been offering great sound journeys for nearly 20 years, notably with Félix Blume and Sophie Berger…
– This summer 2021, Phonurgia Nova is launching the first edition of the Dinard Podcast Festivalwith 4 nights of listening under headphones on the beach from July 28 to 31, training workshops and professional meetings from July 15 to August 15, 2021.
A meeting originally broadcast on July 11, 2021.