Sonia Boyce (née en 1962) s’est faite connaître au début des années 80 en tant que figure clé de la scène artistique British Black Art, devenant une des artistes les plus jeunes de sa génération à entrer dans les collections de la Tate Gallery. Sa production artistique était alors associée à un retour de la peinture figurative, sous les traits de l’identité raciale et genrée dans le contexte britannique thatchérien (Lay Back Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain So Great, 1986).

Or ses œuvres photographiques, Tongues (1997) ; ses papiers peints, Clapping Hands (1994), Lovers’ Rock (1998) ; ses installations, Afro Blanket (1994) et ses vidéos, The Audition (1998), montrent dès les années 1990 un intérêt accru pour la chanson, la musique et le son, à travers une dimension archivistique, performative et le développement d’une pratique collaborative.

Cette articulation s’exerce désormais au sein d’installations et de vidéos, manifestes d’improvisations, lesquelles évoquent les relations de pouvoirs interpersonnels ainsi que les négociations entre l’histoire officielle et la mémoire collective (Dance of Belem, 2011; Move, 2013). Performeurs, chanteurs, vocalistes, danseurs et badauds redéfinissant les enjeux actuels des pratiques collaboratives sous le cadrage des caméras.

Nombres de ses travaux sont présents dans les collections nationales britanniques (Tate Modern, Arts Council Collection, British Council, Victoria and Albert Museum, Government Art Collection, Whitworth Art Gallery).

Inclus dans ses expositions personnelles : Devotional, National Portrait Gallery, Londres (2007) ; Crop Over, Harewood House, Leeds et Museum & Historical Society de la Barbade (2007/2008) ; For you, only you (Paul Bonaventura), Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, Oxford University et tournée (2007/2008) ; Like Love, Spike Island, Bristol et tournée (Green Box Press, Berlin 2010) ; Scat : Sound and Collaboration, Rivington Place, Institute of International Visual Art (2013).

Elle participe régulièrement à des biennales internationales comme Praxis : Art in Times of Uncertainty, 2e Biennale de Thessalonique, Grèce (2009) ; The Impossible Community, Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2011) ; Play ! Recapturing the Radical Imagination, 7e Biennale internationale d’art contemporain de Göteborg (2013) ; All the World’s Futures, 56e Biennale de Venise (2015).

Professeur d’art depuis 1986, l’artiste a souligné le rôle prépondérant de l’école d’art comme lieu de recherche générateur de sa pratique. Sonia Boyce est également chercheure et directrice du projet   « Black Artists and Modernism » financé par le Arts & Humanities Research Council (UAL/université de Middlesex, Londres).

Charles Andrew Bothwell (né en 1981), plus connu sous son nom de scène Astronautalis, est un artiste américain du hip-hop alternatif actuellement basé à Minneapolis, dans le Minnesota. Après avoir atteint une certaine notoriété locale à Jacksonville en Floride et avoir participé au concours Scribble Jam, Astronautalis a auto-produit son premier disque You and Yer Good Ideas (Toi et tes bonnes idées) en 2003. Il a ensuite signé un contrat avec Fighting Records et le disque a été ré-édité en 2005, suivi par un deuxième disque en 2006, The Mighty Ocean and Nine Dark Theaters (L’océan puissant et neuf théâtres obscurs). Son troisième disque Pomegranate (Grenade) a été produit par Eyeball Records en 2008. L’hiver 2009 il a fait une tournée européenne avec le groupe canadien indépendant de rock Tegan and Sara, qu’il a produit à nouveau au printemps 2010 en Australie. Son quatrième disque, This Is Our Science (C’est notre science), a été produit par Fake Four Inc. en 2011. Il descend de James Hepburn, le quatrième comte de Bothwell, une des raisons pour lesquelles ses paroles traitent souvent de fiction historique. Andy a collaboré avec Sonia Boyce à un précédent projet inspiré par l’art du spectacle intitulé Exquisite Cacophony, avec la chanteuse Elaine Mitchener (2015).

Michelle Tofi graduated from London Metropolitan University with a first class honours degree in Film and Broadcast Production in 2011. Since then she has specialised in cinematography and self-shooting, having content she shot for BBC Worldwide screened in 76 million homes across the globe, and travelling to shoot in France, Sweden, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar. Her corporate clients have included Ray-Ban, the Gaurdian, YouTube and Adidas although her passion is for fiction and art filmmaking, and she has collaborated extensively with artist Sonia Boyce, MBE on three video projects. Michelle is also keenly interested in documentary work, and is currently producing her first feature length documentary, « Drag it Out in the Open ».

Richard Thomas is a Sound Recordist and Musician.  He’ll record most sounds (within reason) and a number of them have been featured on TV, film and videos on the internet  (some feature cats).  He will sometimes make noises (sometimes under duress).  He has been accused of making Art before.  His favourite cake is Battenburg.  He regularly refers to himself in the third person.

Cette bibliographie succincte présente quelques clés de lecture de l’exposition Paper Tiger Whisky Soap Theatre.

Artificial Hells de Claire Bichop permet d’inscrire la pratique collaborative de l’artiste au sein d’une filiation artistique héritière de l’avant-garde dada, au situationnisme, au happening jusqu’au renouvellement des pratiques participatives autour de 1990 à partir d’un retour de l’espace social au sein du modernisme européen.

Gilane Tawadros, Mark Crimson, Sophie Orlando offrent des outils de compréhension du travail de Sonia Boyce, à la fois dans sa pratique de la peinture et du dessin des années 1980, tout comme dans sa pratique performative développée à partir des années 1990.

La lecture de l’ouvrage Ways of Seing de John Berger rappelle combien l’image artistique est médiée par son mode de présentation (curatorial, ou discursif) et invite

Réaction au projet
par Richard Thomas
2015 – 2016

I’m a sound recordist. It’s a job that a lot of people don’t even realise exists, but it’s my job to capture the sync sound for picture as it happens. Most people assume ‘doesn’t the mic on the camera do this?’, they assume that whatever the camera ‘sees’ can be heard- more often than not all the camera mic will pick up will be a distant perspective on the action with high background noise and any movement the camera operator makes will be very present. So, my job is to get microphones closer to the things we want recorded. But in an improvised performance, how do I know what we’re going to want to record?

In my line of work I usually find that planning is really important to getting results; the more I know about what is happening, the more likely I’ll have the tools and personnel to be able to cover and deal with a given situation. However another skill I often have to employ is improvisation: something will be changed at the last moment, someone will neglect to tell me something they didn’t think was relevant and that can make a huge difference to me. I’ll be constantly trying to second guess what’s going to be thrown at me by people whose main concern is what something looks like. I’m also no stranger to improvisation in a more general artistic context- I’ve performed free improvised music for a number of years including work with artists in other contexts, such as dance and visual art. However, in this case I’m improvising more as a technician (which I’m possibly less comfortable with).

My first thoughts when Sonia approached me about this project were if and how the performance would be contained- how many performers there would be? What sort of sound they could be making? What the space would be like? All these questions were open ended so I packed kit for as many situations as I could think of happening and assumed (wrongly) that as the process went on that I’d have more of an idea what was going to happen during the performance and looked into where I could get additional equipment if required locally and the process emerged.

Over the two days before the performance, we started looking around the grounds at Villa Arson and found so many interesting spaces. I really enjoyed the brutalist aesthetic of the architecture, and also how its structure allowed green spaces and plants to grow in sections. I ended up taking far too many photos of the place… I also considered what impact each space would have on me being able to capture the performance, either looking at the amount of space available (the more restricted, the closer I could get microphones on stands and be able to cover the area adequately) and how much background noise there would be.

The day before we also filmed both Andy and Vania working with the students. To be honest, the things both of them were doing with the students were pretty much the scariest things I could imagine dealing with for something like this on a technical level: Andy’s group were doing very low level dialogue – sometimes whispered to each other (and some of his group weren’t the most extrovert of people either), while Vania’s were climbing on top of each other. The reasons for this are that low level dialogue requires close microphones to pick it up, even if you were standing a few metres away you’d struggle to hear what the person is saying, and this is with your brain concentrating on them (see the ‘cocktail party’ or Haas effect) and microphones can’t distinguish individual voices like your brain can. Personal microphones would need to be mounted on the body of the performer and could easily get moved/unstuck and pick up clothing noise easily, so adding movement with climbing on top of each other would limit what they would pick up.

So, when the performance (or “happening”?) began I decided to use as many personal microphones as possible on a variety of performers, mainly so we got a mixture of languages close up and one who said they had an idea based around a song. I also had a stereo microphone setup on a boom to capture a wider perspective. However, I still needed to have a portable rig and it was too late in the day to order in more equipment (let alone enough to have a microphone on everyone…). I had to make sure the microphones and radio transmitters were securely attached to the performers and wouldn’t move, even when doing some physical things. Even after it had started I thought we may stop before moving location, however it didn’t- I was stuck with this setup and had to improvise, running after the performers!

Afterwards, I thought that both through the aesthetic of the buildings and the nature of what the performers were doing that it did have a very 1960s experimentalist feel to it, where I imagine the students of, say Black Mountain College with John Cage and Merce Cunningham may have done similar things- they’re reconsidering what can be considered art, music or performance and not letting things like training determine whether you’re “allowed” to perform like this or not. It’s the sort of environment which encouraged experimentation and allowed performance art to come into its own.

When I’ve worked with Sonia before I know she doesn’t really mind seeing crew and equipment, also I think part of drew me to my job is my ability of avoiding photographs. I do like the fact that the ‘workings’ are revealed (and I’m also doing that here a little).