Joachim Montessuis & Gaël Segalen

Magaio Egregore

“Magaio Egregore” is a sound creation based on the convergence of our two approaches : the field recording and dialogue artistic practice of Gaël Segalen and the trance oriented composer and performer Joachim Montessuis. The aim of this projectis to reveal the “spirit of the place”, an invitation to create a communion spirit in the rural area and express what would/could be a collective egregore ( concept referring to a group spirit, an autonomous psychic entity or force produced and influenced by the desires and emotions of many individuals united in a common goal). To achieve that, the artists want to process a composition and a live performance with the recorded voices of the villagers of Magaio. This composition will be a massive dissonant polyphony, a colossal drone puzzle as a deep ritualistic crescendo litany going from semantic words to a fertil sonic compost. A linguistic meta-dialogue, from the treasures of the language, local expressions (vernacular), stories, the continuous flow and infinite stories stimulated by the microphone, will feed the composition.

Gaël Segalen is a sound artist and director. She records field-sounds of disoriented scenes in many languages, building a vital fiction. More than a testimony, the microphone offers an improvisation space to think forward in an offshored world. It is a pretext to meet people and to have many talks. Member of Parisian MU Collective, she collaborates on projects of audio walks and installations, conducts sound workshops and teaches listening and sound experimentation at ESEC, school of cinematic studies in Paris.

Joachim Montessuis is interested in the links between art, sound, science and spirituality. Since 1993 he has been developing a transversal sonic poetry praxisfocused on experimental voice processing and immersive concert-installations. His noise and video events are devised as panic-poetic spaces in which sensorial disturbance and blurring occur, starting from silence to wall of sound. He has worked in some major Europe an electronic arts centers (CICV, Fresnoy, V2_Lab, KHM) and his live performances and installations have been presented at international venues and festivals including DEAF, ISEA, ICA,Yerba Buena Center in SF, Sónar, Elektra, Rio de Janeiro among others.