Off-site/ “Les cris” (The Cries): Anna Holveck’s residency at the Évariste Galois secondary school, (Paris 13th). September 2022 to June 2023

Anna Holveck, Amour, Amour, 2016-2022, Sound performance, approx. 10’.

Anna Holveck’s pro­ject "Les cris" is based on the scream as a sound form. Screaming calls upon over­whelming and cre­ative emo­tions such as joy and excite­ment or anger and pain, but can we detach it from its emo­tional charge to observe its musical qual­i­ties? Starting from the ambient hubbub in the class­rooms, the artist works with the stu­dents on the cre­ative poten­tial of the sound of their voices as well as on lis­tening to their envi­ron­ment. For the stu­dents, these work­shops are an oppor­tu­nity to work on orality, the sense of lis­tening to them­selves and to others and, through this, to explore the tools of voice and sound recording.

In this pro­ject, shouting is seen as a way of expressing one­self - lit­er­ally to squeeze out - of acti­vating one’s vocal cords through acoustic pres­sure that is imparted to the space. The stu­dents work on the posi­tioning of the screaming voice, and its exten­sion to the speaking or singing voice, to learn to scream without hurting them­selves or others. From the new­born whose lungs are opening, to the spon­taneity of reflex cries as well as the end­less number of animal cries, the shouted sound is pri­mary but it can also be elab­o­rated. Once artic­u­lated, the cry becomes a syl­lable and then a word. How do you shout in writing? This allows stu­dents to explore what makes them want to shout.
In con­trast to this form of out­burst, these work­shops are also an oppor­tu­nity to listen to the quality of the silence after this explo­sive sound. The scream has a social, polit­ical and artistic his­tory. By going through it, the stu­dents will be able to ques­tion, for example, how do we teach chil­dren to shout? What does the cry of a single person or a group mean? This lib­er­ating, per­mis­sive and com­plex ges­ture is an oppor­tu­nity to make spaces sound, to pro­duce sound and to listen to it rever­berate.

This research res­i­dency will lead to the pro­duc­tion of a resti­tu­tion with the pupils.

This pro­ject is con­ducted in part­ner­ship with the Evariste Galois sec­ondary school (Paris, 13th dis­trict) and the City of Paris’ Actions Collégiens scheme. It takes place within the frame­work of the Art Pour Grandir artistic res­i­den­cies in sec­ondary schools and is sup­ported by the City of Paris.

Images of workshops at Evariste Galois secondary school and Bétonsalon. Photo: Elena Lespes Muñoz

Anna Holveck, Flutées, 2019, Actoral Festival, Montevideo Marseille, 2020

Anna Holveck is a visual artist, com­poser and singer, and was born in 1993. She lives and works in Paris.

She explores the rela­tion­ship between sound pro­duc­tion devices and the voice with space, through the mediums of per­for­mance, video and sound instal­la­tion. The phys­ical impulses of the voice, the main medium of her research, enable her to listen to the qual­i­ties of the sur­rounding space by ques­tioning it from the artic­u­lated space of the mouth, in a back and-forth between inte­ri­ority and exte­ri­ority. In the same way, the micro­phone and the loud­speaker, always borne by the body, are the sound pro­duc­tion devices that let us listen to, trans­late or mimic the vibra­tions of the acoustic and polit­ical land­scape in which they are embedded. Her per­for­mances, instal­la­tions and videos create immer­sive lis­tening sit­u­a­tions that involve both the body that pro­duces the sound and the body that per­ceives it, at a vague boundary between the ear and mouth.

Several of her pieces have recently been added to the public col­lec­tion of the Frac Ile-de-France as well as that of the Frac Franche-Comté in 2017. Her work has been shown at the Centre Pompidou, the Pernod Ricard Foundation, Le Creux de L’Enfer, La Vitrine of the Frac Ile-de-France and Bétonsalon, among others. It was recently shown at the Institut d’Art Contemporain Villeurbanne during the exhi­bi­tion Des voix traver­sées and at Instants Chavirés in Montreuil.