Un pays supplémentaire (an additional country)
Play for young audiences and all ages, sound and visual creation
premiered in 2025
approx. 40 minutes
Claudine Simon : concept, performance
Fred Hocké : set design, performance
Etienne Demoulin : sound engineer
An open piano is placed on the floor on small legs.
You can see its : strings, pegs, small hammers and gold-coloured metal frame.
You can hear it : melodies, percussive sounds, strange sounds
You can visit it : a little train will take you to inaccessible places
You can scatter it around : a few pieces of key on the floor, a few accessories
You can transform your vision : it changes scale
scale, it becomes immense, it becomes a city, an entire world
This piece is a sonic and visual exploration in search of the secrets hidden inside a piano. We can appreciate its melodic qualities or its power when it manifests itself like a percussion orchestra. All this happens by chance through movement and encounters with the material.
It’s a sort of celebration of beauty, the beauty of things, the beauty of sound, the beauty of the fleeting and the ephemeral…
A title, an approach…
Un pays supplémentaire is a reference to a phrase coined by film critic Serge Daney.
This expression sounds like a message, a curiosity for children.
To have music in your life is to have an additional world, a whole realm of emotions and perceptions. It’s also a way of living, seeing, listening and feeling that you can make your own and that creates a world. It’s a world that is both very special and exceptional, and one that becomes familiar to us.
If I can draw a parallel, it’s a bit like when you’re faced with translating a foreign language. When you go looking for formulas and expressions, you very often find an astonishing way of saying things that is specific to that language. These formulas, these unexpected combinations of words for our own mode of expression, our own language, stimulate the imagination. Foreign languages have a fascinating way of making us see and feel what we say in our own language a little differently, strangely. It brings up cultural, visual and aural references, discovering new ways of thinking and seeing, a whole baggage of curious equivalents and surprising false friendships – in short, another world…
This project will lead the children to discover something very special, an unusual kind of music, something a little experimental. This discovery, this encounter, will be brought about by a stratagem! It’s a little train that you can follow with your eyes. It acts on sound and produces cast shadows.
Along the way, the child’s interest in the events along the way, both amused and amazed, puts him or her in the right receptive mood. Their field of attention and desire grows, their perceptive field opens up, and they are offered a new way of listening, as an invitation rather than a prescription.
An installation
An unusual installation appeared : a miniature electric train on a circuit on the floor, surrounding the piano.
Objects belonging to the piano (keys, hammers, small mechanisms, springs) or to preparations (clothes pegs, balls, brushes, etc.) are placed on either side.
The train then sets off.
An LED light fixed to the front sweeps across the space, creating a shadow effect on the walls of the room, while a micro-canon fixed to the top amplifies the sounds of the journey.
Objects scattered on the floor take on a completely different form and appearance. The closer they are to the spotlight, the more imposing their shadows become. Little by little, these figures take on the shape of an urban landscape, the projected black touches becoming gigantic buildings that stand out against the walls.
Our position as spectators is turned upside down. This miniature train and the phantasmagoria associated with its movement transform us into travellers on an unexpected journey. We’re transported into an astonishing, improbable universe, creating an immediate sense of interaction with the performance.
An unusual installation appeared : a miniature electric train on a circuit on the floor, surrounding the piano.
Objects belonging to the piano (keys, hammers, small mechanisms, springs) or to preparations (clothes pegs, balls, brushes, etc.) are placed on either side.
The train then sets off.
An LED light fixed to the front sweeps across the space, creating a shadow effect on the walls of the room, while a micro-canon fixed to the top amplifies the sounds of the journey.
Objects scattered on the floor take on a completely different form and appearance. The closer they are to the spotlight, the more imposing their shadows become. Little by little, these figures take on the shape of an urban landscape, the projected black touches becoming gigantic buildings that stand out against the walls.
Our position as spectators is turned upside down. This miniature train and the phantasmagoria associated with its movement transform us into travellers on an unexpected journey. We’re transported into an astonishing, improbable universe, creating an immediate sense of interaction with the performance.
rudy decelière