Batch of musty cassettes to give away -2018
Sound and installation based on found footage
In December 2016, Bretagne, a retired woman donated a batch of musty VHS cassettes.
« And I have audio cassettes too, will you take them? »
Lost in this batch of audio cassettes: an answering machine tape, recordings of interviews or with family. We retrace his life as a journalist: interviews with musicians, his life in Paris and later with the choir and singing lessons. His family life too, his three children, including Jacques and Christine, his husband and not forgetting his friend Marie Christine.
A project presented at LE KABINET , Brussels during the exhibition for an Anthropology of Sound in 2018.
I have always been surprised to find VHS family films for sale at flea markets. What surprises me is that they are supposedly being sold by mistake.¨These tapes are mixed in with Disney VHS and a Best of TV. This indifference could be explained by the plurality of uses. Compact cassette and VHS media were very popular for many uses: commercial, private copying, and source recording (directly from a VHS camera, or an audio cassette). With the obsolescence of audio-video formats came indifference and disinterest in these media.
Stored then forgotten, their multiple uses make archiving difficult, and the precious copy is lost between other cassettes. This is exacerbated by the loss of playback equipment, which is either not replaced when defective, or replaced by another machine.
This project is a continuation of my research into in- time, espionage and listening.
The original meaning of Ecoute in Old French refers to the situation of listening in the doorway. Unearthing these private archives is a reflection of our fingerprints and the intimate traces we leave behind, whether on the Internet or on our hard drives.