The Human Strike
2018

What is at stake is the discovery of a new intimacy with ourselves that will make us resistant to cruelty and retaliation as much as lucid in front of abuses, flexible and detached, free from the need to follow instructions or leaders.  – Claire Fontaine

This human strife, colors in the sky, striking out, the improvisation, konbit kombit, to refuse the order of this system that withdraws the interruptive figuring of community: he stands up and he searches for the new body, créolité créolité, this sound that sends the feet stomping, and the unworking of the hands, this hand that clasps and then reaches – is touched and scraped by this that surrounds, and the others, from the islands to the Northern colony.

The work is developed as part of a residency at Avatar sound research lab in Quebec City. In collaboration with a group of students from École d’art (Université Laval), as well as a Haitian drummer living in the city, a series of exchanges and musical experiments are developed and recorded, capturing an idea of the poetic fragment: a language of opacity, disidentification. This includes a set of five lyrical narratives translated into Haitian creole and spoken by Emmanuel Dely. The resulting set of audio mixes aims at articulating a hybrid compositional body (reflecting upon the complex relation of Quebec and Haiti): an improvised musicality capturing the idea of “the human strike” – the undoing of individuality as a sovereign singularity.

A final performance was held at L’Anti Bar and presented through a multi-channel sound system, along with a set of improvised sculptural assemblages. With Marc-Antoine Cloutier, Stéphanie Letarte, Fanny Levy, and Emmanuel Delly. Translation Karl Petion.

As part of SON/CONTEXTE and in collaboration with Avatar and Julie Faubert.
February 2 , 2018

track 1 / track 2 / track 3 / track 4 / track 5 / CD release