LISTENING EYE<\/strong> We are a sonic materiality, \u201ca faint breath of the image5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>. 5 <\/a> - Georges Didi-Huberman, Gestes d\u2019air et de pierre : Corps, parole, souffle, image<\/em> (Paris: Minuit, 2005), 62 (our translation). 62.<\/span>\u201d A surface so brightly lit that we are compelled to close our eyes and just listen. We are a vibration that demands \u201cto make appear what is so close, so immediate, so intimately linked to ourselves that, as a consequence, we do not perceive it.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Michel Foucault, quoted in Sandra Laugier, \u201cL\u2019ordinaire transatlantique : De Concord \u00e0 Chicago, en passant par Oxford,\u201dL\u2019Homme<\/em> No. 187\u2013188 (2008): 173 (our translation). 173.<\/span> We are the alliance between an image that emerges just as representation fails and a voice that constantly evades those seeking to hear it. We leave only the \u201ctrace of a gesture inscribed in both the pictorial space and the voice.”7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Guylaine Chevarie-Lessard, La voix, entre l\u2019audible et le visible : Le processus de cr\u00e9ation comme mode de connaissance du sujet<\/em>(Montr\u00e9al: Nota Bene, 2019), 6 (our translation).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n VOICE<\/strong> My eyes are inundated with intense light. I close them while my body moulds itself to a vibrating state of reality. I align myself with a tremor\u2019s breath. I speak from the resonance of a dense substance. I speak from an \u201copaque and disturbing paste from which we\u2019d simply like to hear something speak a little.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Gabrielle Giasson-Dulude, Les chants du mime : En compagnie d\u2019\u00c9tienne Decroux<\/em> (Montr\u00e9al: Noro\u00eet, 2017), 67 (our translation). 67.<\/span>I speak from a mass to the air movements, from the \u201cbreathing forms appearing before the eye.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Alexandre Hollan,Je suis ce que je vois : Notes sur la peinture et le dessin, 1975-2015<\/em> (Toulouse: \u00c9r\u00e8s, 2015), 119 (our translation).<\/span>I align myself with the mobilization of their gestures. Under the influence of their resolute strength, I freely move into the field of action. I hold back my gaze, slow down my breath, transpose myself into multiple spontaneous movements: twists, rotations, hesitations, stammers. For a moment, I lean on these organic sensations, then sink back into silence. I trace \u201can underlying current of impressions beneath language.\u201d10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - David Le Breton, \u00c9clats de voix: Une anthropologie des voix<\/em>(Paris: M\u00e9taili\u00e9, 2011), 40 (our translation).<\/span>I consider the \u201cblurring of the gaze,\u201d since \u201cwe all watch, eyes closed.\u201d11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Didi-Huberman, Gestes d\u2019air et de pierre : Corps, parole, souffle, image,<\/em> 21 (our translation).<\/span> I think of the eye closing as a sensorial crossing. I think of darkness as a sign of attention. I turn off the lights and listen to the visual opacity. Suddenly, the negative image appears on my retina with precision. In it, I discover a \u201cliving, evolving organicity,\u201d a voice that \u201cannounces a sensory being.\u201d12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - Le Breton, \u00c9clats de voix: Une anthropologie des voix, 20 (our translation). <\/span> I am searching for the right tonality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n IMAGE<\/strong> The right tonality follows the movements of the eyelid opening and closing. \u201cThe gaze needs some vibration to keep actively observing.\u201d13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 13 <\/a> - Hollan, Je suis ce que je vois: Notes sur la peinture et le dessin, 1975-2015, 160 (our translation).<\/span> The image needs the voice that calls on the senses, the floating resonance that lies in wait for a surface to grab on to. The image draws the edges of the intangible. It is the frame that allows the right tonality to be embodied. It is its centre of gravity. The voice gains depth. The image circumscribes the air, gives it shape, solidifies the atmosphere to better observe forms. While sounds disperse, the image searches for a medium to hear them better. Its fixedness is the listening condition of a future vibration. The image is constructed in close contact with the frankness of the sonic flow. The image contains it, preserves it, conveys it. \u201cA simple surface has the otherwise fundamental capacity to produce a place, a container for bodies.\u201d14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 14 <\/a> - Didi-Huberman, Ce que nous voyons, ce qui nous regarde,<\/em> 61 (our translation).<\/span>It is a place of contemplation that establishes the conditions for the voice\u2019s emergence. The image comes with a listening quality, makes room for silent observation. Vibrational movements require moments of respite. The image traces places of rest. It is in this interval that the voice moves behind the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n VOICE <\/strong>Behind the eye, the horizon of an ongoing quest opens. I move toward the possibilities of the senses, multiply the directions. I am a transmission, a live articulation, \u201ca motion of air creating signifieds and signifiers, but also flows, intensities, uncertainties, atmospheres, intangible yet fully embodied events.\u201d15<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 15 <\/a> - Didi-Huberman, Gestes d\u2019air et de pierre : Corps, parole, souffle, image,<\/em> 21 (our translation).<\/span> I am a capture of crossings and deafness. I am heard very well when I sink into silence. The most significant voices are the most opaque ones. I am the space revealed \u201cthrough gaps, recurrences, and superimpositions.\u201d16<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 16 <\/a> - Ren\u00e9 Lapierre,Renversements : L\u2019\u00e9criture-voix<\/em>(Montr\u00e9al: Les Herbes rouges, 2011), 158 (our translation). 158.<\/span> I am the place of a first take and a retake. I am the place of a small nick that grows into a large hole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n IMAGE<\/strong> A large hole, the image \u201ccan appear only by withdrawing from the world.\u201d17<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 17 <\/a> - Chevarie-Lessard, La voix, entre l\u2019audible et le visible : Le processus de cr\u00e9ation comme mode de connaissance du sujet, 9 (our translation).<\/span> Materiality is thus transposed into audible reality. It is a phenomenon of transition. The image becomes perceptible through its passage. It is a place of mediation. Materiality \u201cappears not as object, but as possibility and movement.\u201d18<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 18 <\/a> - Lapierre, Renversements : L\u2019\u00e9criture-voix, 159 (our translation).<\/span> It shifts from tonality to tonality, from granulation to granulation, from texture to texture. It reflects someone else\u2019s face, prolongs their voice all the way to the horizon. It is \u201cthe mirror of sound and an image of noise.\u201d19<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 19 <\/a> - Joseph Joubert,Pens\u00e9es, maximes, essais et correspondance<\/em>, vol. 1 (Paris: Ligaran, 2015), 326 (our translation). 326.<\/span>It is the phenomenon of a distant reflection that echoes all the way to here. It is a body that functions in \u201cthe obscure visual background of the other.\u201d20<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 20 <\/a> - Didi-Huberman, Gestes d\u2019air et de pierre : Corps, parole, souffle, image, 60 (our translation).<\/span> There, it releases an energy value. Closely linked to sensation, it is distorting, alive, transformative. It exists only through movement and mutation. It \u201cdoes not take place<\/em> at such or such a point of the form but at each impulse of its self-propulsion21<\/sup><\/a><\/span>.\u201d 21 <\/a> - Maldiney, Regard Parole Espace, 60 (our translation).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n VOICE<\/strong> Although form moves from impulse to impulse, nothing appears on the eye\u2019s surface. I forget about perspective while the story unfolds elsewhere. Elsewhere, I traverse a time that their breaths. From breath to breath, I amplify the acoustic space. \u201cI find what connects\u2026 something\u2014 like language\u2014immaterial, yet terrestrial, something circular that returns to itself.\u201d22<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 22 <\/a> - Paul Celan, The Meridian<\/em>, trans. Pierre Joris (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 12. 62.<\/span> I want to become heavier in the image, so I sit in the middle of a space where many voices are opening at the same time. I try to experience the thing, the sideways step, the playing field, the replies of our impasses. I listen to the resonance of bodies filled with correspondences, with restraint, with tracings. I narrow my eyes in an attempt to decipher. The sound event resonates just as the image disappears. I stop for a moment, listening to the acoustic exhaust. I determine the wave of intonation, keep in mind pieces of melted materials. I emphasize their rhythms, their awkwardness, their thickening. I lean toward oblique passages, echo the edges of the space. I emit radiation, become spectral. I jump from one testimony to another. I am \u201ca spatiotemporal form \u2014 a single frame of space-time \u2014 a fundamental form of sensing.\u201d23<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 23 <\/a> - Didi-Huberman, Ce que nous voyons, ce qui nous regarde<\/em>, 103 (our translation).<\/span> In the vicinity of the clearable and the rebellious, I resume the debate that disarms. I don\u2019t belong to only one side of the bodies. This fact is forgotten as the days pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n IMAGE<\/strong> As the days pass, the material remains fully alive. It flails, writhes, escapes. Sometimes the visual experience dematerializes and unfolds, unstructured and gaseous. Sometimes the air condensed in the image is released, breath escapes, and the inaudible form is revealed. Charged with affective lived experience, the image is the outcome of a power discharge. Affect prevents it from being reduced to simple visibility. Affect dubs it with a voice allied to the body\u2019s rhythm. It is a regeneration, a restitution that continues toward a promise. The form \u201cis subjectively integrated into a wish for the future.\u201d24<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 24 <\/a> - Catherine Malabou, \u201cLa plasticit\u00e9 en souffrance,\u201d Soci\u00e9t\u00e9s et repr\u00e9sentations<\/em> 2, no. 20 (2005): 35 (our translation).<\/span>It is a reminder of hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n VOICE<\/strong> I remain hopeful, as \u201csometimes, existence is an inflection of the voice.\u201d25<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 25 <\/a> - Le Breton, \u00c9clats de voix : Une anthro- pologie des voix, 205 (our translation).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n IMAGE <\/strong>The image sustains hope on the continuum of movement. It takes the lead, keeps up the joint effort, ensures the succession of the effect. It is a gesture of \u201csurrender, not as much to the other as to what takes place in the voice, in the light for which voice is place.\u201d26<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 26 <\/a> - Lapierre, Renversements : L\u2019\u00e9criture- voix, 139 (our translation).<\/span> The light spreading over the superficial part of the surface is the precursor of an immersion into the thickness of the object. It indicates the underlying scream. In places where the image is enigmatic, resonance is all the more audible. \u201cIt awakens echoes in the world it abandons.\u201d27<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 27 <\/a> - Hollan, Je suis ce que je vois : Notes sur la peinture et le dessin, 1975-2015, 299 (our translation).<\/span>It summons future subtleties, comes together with vocal transparencies until it forms a single organ with the voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LISTENING EYE<\/strong> Our organ is a polyphonic arrangement. The wind interferes with the image. And the image rumbles from the lack animating the sonic body. We arrive at two separate moments, and yet we attend to the appearance of the same body. While the image abandons its contours, the voice spreads throughout the space. We transmit the signal of the received message from one to another. We open the floodgates of resonance. We are a community of divergences and extensions. We work to \u201chold together the multiple and the unit.\u201d28<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 28 <\/a> - Cl\u00e9ment, La voix verticale, 296 (our translation).<\/span> We come from being put to the test in which spacing separates and unites. The fixedness of the image collides and aligns itself with the mobility of a diffuse sonority. Our resonance is a struggle opening toward a burgeoning passage. We are the vibrating frame of one body clashing against another. The voice makes the image dance so that it gains mobility while the image works to condense the air to its form. We defy each other indefinitely, and yet we coexist. The image that imposes itself with density is a silent voice. Conversely, the scream is an image that absents itself. We are the incessant movement of an inspiration that has run its course to transform into an expiration that eventually wears out to then inspire once again. We are an \u201cassemblage of time, breath, and material to which we pose the question of the possible.\u201d29<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 29 <\/a> - Lapierre, Renversements : L\u2019\u00e9criture-voix, 120 (our translation).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Translated from the French by Oana Avasilichioaei<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/DO6-Img2-IM_Haddam_Chevarie-Lessard_04_RGB-1.jpg\")
Sentiment oc\u00e9anique #15<\/em>, 61 \u00d7 46 cm, 2020. <\/span>
Photo : Paul Litherland, permission de l\u2019artiste | courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n