Document – 31 juillet 2018<\/p>\n
Text by
\nBlake Abbie<\/p>\n
Sound designer Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sanchez and multimedia artist Laurie Anderson discuss the influence of memories, the relationship between image and sound, and Anderson\u2019s new film, \u201cHeart of a Dog\u201d for Document’s Fall\/Winter 2015 issue.<\/p>\n
During his formative years, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sanchez became drawn to the experimental sounds of John Cage and Brian Eno. Meanwhile Laurie Anderson began playing with people\u2019s perceptions of sound in the 70s by electronically manipulating voices and instrumentals. Anderson\u2019s breakthrough piece, \u201cO Superman,\u201d turned her into a household name in the United Kingdom, where it reached number two on the Singles Chart. Martin Margiela met Sanchez by chance in 1988 and gave him the opportunity to create the soundtrack for his next runway show. Since then, Marc Jacobs, Comme des Gar\u00e7ons, Prada, and Givenchy have tapped the sound designer to conceptualize the music for their collections.<\/p>\n
The two artists, who are linked through the common medium of sound, blur the lines between the aural and the visual: Anderson through her work across various mediums, and Sanchez by designing the soundtracks for runway shows and art installations. This fall, Anderson returns to directing with the release of Heart of a Dog. Sanchez and Anderson discuss what it takes to be an artist, how memory affects creative output, and the role of sound and aesthetics in storytelling.<\/p>\n
Laurie Anderson\u2014Where are you, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sanchez\u2014In Normandy.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Beautiful. What\u2019s behind that sheet on your wall?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014On the wall? The windows and some trees.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014You don\u2019t want to see trees?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014Well, it\u2019s nighttime now and when I work in the studio, I like to be surrounded in my cavern. [Laughs] So I know your work very well. And I have some experience with it not a long time ago: Last year I worked on the Prada exhibition Art or Sound, where your work was included. I organized all the sound for the exhibition. I work a lot with them.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Can I ask you something? What is that snapping sound?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014This sound? [Clicking]. It\u2019s just me playing with my pen! It\u2019s making music! [Laughs]. I remember for Prada a long time ago you did [your holographic installation] Dal Vivo. I was very impressed\u2014it\u2019s really something I\u2019m looking at with my work.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014In what way?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014This idea to be with the sound\u2014or with the image\u2014in two places at the same time.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Yes. How does that work with you? How do you make that work?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014For me, sound has always related to something with memories, like the experience with my grandfather who couldn\u2019t go back to Spain because of Franco[\u2019s dictatorship]. He was always listening to the Spanish radio. He was in Paris, but at the same time he was in Spain with the sound. What I\u2019m doing all the time with the sound is this research of being in different places in a mental way.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Can you give me an example of one of your recent pieces that does that?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014Three years ago I did a piece Une utile illusion. It was at Galerie Serge le Borgne in Paris. It used the theater technique where I was reading the description of the scene. It was this idea that the person who listens visualizes his own fantasy. I\u2019m really into that; I always research and work with sound. For a long time that has really impressed me with your work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019m doing all the time with the sound is this research of being in different places in a mental way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014That\u2019s actually why I usually take music out. Let\u2019s say you have a story about a forest, a storm, and a person walking through it. The last thing you want to do is have imagery or sound connected to that. I gradually pare things down and pare things down until there\u2019s more and more room for the person who is listening to enter into that and use their imagination. What you\u2019re saying is that you have a kind of collaboration with people and leave room for their imagination.<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014Yes. I remember once listening to you [speak] a very long time ago, and you were talking about a story where you were on a plane. I don\u2019t know if it was from one of your pieces or if it was a real story, which is actually nice\u2014if it\u2019s real or unreal. You were on a plane, and there was someone sitting near you who [looked through the window and] said she didn\u2019t know the stars were so close\u2014but it was actually a city. That is something so poetic, these kinds of ideas. I saw your movie Heart of a Dog, and there\u2019s something about that too. It\u2019s not just images; there is something behind that.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014I think the film also uses a lot of those techniques because it\u2019s just non-stop talking\u2014just blah blah\u2014and I tried to make that your guide through these ideas and then make the visual language very simple, very loop-like, nothing really complicated. I find a lot of times if something isn\u2019t working I have to ask: What\u2019s leading? Is the story leading? Is the picture leading? Is the music leading? If I find that there is too much going on\u2014which I find is usually the case\u2014I take everything else out except what\u2019s leading. How do you tell your story well? You can start using other things in it, but if it starts getting too fancy, just take it out. I\u2019m always editing to make things simpler. With this film, I kept taking music out, I kept taking pictures out, because they got in the way of the story. The story is the driver\u2014it drives everything. I found that I\u2019m less and less a so-called \u201cmultimedia artist\u201d and just someone who is interested in story.<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014For me it\u2019s something that is a very strange thing in Europe. Because you think that you have the \u201cbig past,\u201d but for people like me the past has disappeared because of the last war. I\u2019m trying to reconstruct a story through the sound. The sound has this aspect for me.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014What are you reconstructing?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014Something that has been lost, something that has disappeared. People have disappeared; I\u2019m very concerned today by what\u2019s happening in the Middle East, Syria, when you see these people that have to leave their country. My family lived during the Spanish Civil War, and with the sound I\u2019m trying to capture fragments of memories, to reconstruct these fragments. What is very interesting is that I do this work myself, for my personal work, but at the same time what I do for commercial work is not far from that because of its fragments of pictures, fragments of memories that I put together. Twenty five years ago when I started to do this work, I wasn\u2019t thinking about that, but more and more I\u2019ve learned what was inside me and why I was doing this with the sound. For example, 30 years ago when I was 15, I was completely obsessed with music, but I didn\u2019t see myself as a musician. I was doing things with sound, but it was not really music. Then, more and more, something appears like fate, you try to keep making it appear.<\/p>\n
I recently listened to Nothing in My Pockets.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Oh, you listened to that? [Laughs]. You\u2019re one of three people in the world who heard that! That\u2019s funny. I loved that project for Radio France. But I would never again do an audio diary, because you would have to listen to all of your days over again. It\u2019s not like reading something\u2014you listen through in real time to decide what to do with it. I loved making it and I hated editing it.<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014Do you think it\u2019s easier to do with images?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve thought many times about this idea of making records, but it\u2019s not really my thing. My thing is to build an environment with the sound.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014I think so because you can move through them more quickly; you can fast-forward and you can\u2019t do that with sound. You just can\u2019t fast-forward and still get an idea of what it is. I love that sound forces you to listen in real time, I love that about it. It\u2019s a very stabilizing thing for me, because you just have to sit back and let it go in clock-time.<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014When you make music, do you make images at the same time? When I do, I have to create images at the same time. I go take photographs\u2014there\u2019s a real relationship between image and music or sound. I can\u2019t do sound or music without thinking of images.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014So then how do you put them together?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014I don\u2019t put them together; it just either starts with images or it starts with sound. I\u2019m always going to think of an image, and I\u2019ll do it.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Wow, that\u2019s so interesting! So do you have a painting studio right behind that curtain?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014Well, I live in Le Havre, which is a great place because it\u2019s very industrial. It\u2019s a great place to make images or take photographs, which will always be related to the sound or music that I do. It\u2019s not that at the end there will be both images and sound; it\u2019s probably only going to be sound. But there is always this idea of images somewhere.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Are these still images?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014They are still images and moving images.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Oh, either way. Wow, I don\u2019t think I know anyone who works like that\u2014who works at the same time but doesn\u2019t combine them. It\u2019s very interesting.<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014It\u2019s very important for me; I\u2019ve always done it. If I create music\u2014because I do a lot of music for shows, in collaboration with people who use mood boards or images\u2014it\u2019s very important to have this relationship between the sound and the visual.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014I always advise people who are trying to think of what to call themselves to say \u201cmultimedia artist,\u201d because it\u2019s totally meaningless. Also I\u2019ve found that the category thing doesn\u2019t help me much at all. To say that I\u2019m a musician , a filmmaker, a painter, or a writer\u2014I do all those things, but my main aim was to avoid the \u201cart police\u201d who come in and say, \u201cWhat do you think you\u2019re doing writing a novel? You\u2019re a painter!\u201d Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric, you probably became an artist for similar reasons to what I did: you want to be free, you want to make something. But guess what, here come all the categories. Generally that has to do with marketing. When I was doing a lot of music, they would say, \u201cOK, what bin are you going to be in? Electro-pop? Experimental electro? Pop electro? Pop-pop?\u201d I didn\u2019t make any distinctions between what I do, and for the longest time nobody ever asked what I wanted to do, so I didn\u2019t decide. I still haven\u2019t decided, so it\u2019s nice to be vague about what you\u2019re doing. I\u2019m preparing for a painting show now in Geneva, September 16 it opens. Which is kind of ridiculous. It\u2019s coming along! I\u2019m used to doing things that I enjoy doing. I don\u2019t really worry about people thinking, \u201cWhy painting? It\u2019s just so retro!\u201d So I don\u2019t care. I don\u2019t really care what people think.<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014We don\u2019t care!<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014I also have a film installation and some music. Probably like you, you don\u2019t really have to put those into categories. You go out and take some photographs, then you\u2019re back in the studio and you\u2019re not worried that one thing is \u201cmusic\u201d and one is called \u201cphotography.\u201d Right?<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, sound has always related to something with memories, like the experience with my grandfather who couldn\u2019t go back to Spain because of Franco[\u2019s dictatorship]\u2026What I\u2019m doing all the time with the sound is this research of being in different places in a mental way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014In America it is true, but in Europe is it not easy to do it because people are really placed into categories. It\u2019s true that I wanted to do something, to create something. Afterwards you don\u2019t care if it\u2019s sound or image\u2014just something. You go above that. Let\u2019s just carry on.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Exactly, just carry on and try to make something beautiful, or dark, or disgusting, just something. Just make things!<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014Yes!<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014You\u2019re sitting in your studio now, is there anything you could play for us that would be easy?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014Uh, it\u2019s complicated!<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014No, I know I hate when people ask me that and my answer is like, \u201cAh, not really!\u201d What are you working on now?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014At the moment I\u2019m searching for things.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Oh, that\u2019s a nice time! How do you search?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014I make sounds; it\u2019s always very free. At the moment I\u2019m writing also.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Writing words?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014Yes, writing something that is quite autobiographical. All my work, a lot of my personal work, is about memories.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Yes, I\u2019m definitely suspicious of memories. Think of how much time you spend in the past and how little you\u2019re spending right this second. I\u2019m always thinking of what you\u2019ll say next or what you just said. For me even on a bigger level, I\u2019m always thinking of different time frames than the one I\u2019m in. I would love to be more connected to what\u2019s going on now, but it\u2019s hard when you\u2019re trying to make something. Because a lot of making is trying to remember something, trying to remember it well with all the intensity that it had. In Heart of a Dog, for me, memory was also sound. It was a sound that I had forgotten, the sound in a hospital when I was a kid. I only remembered it through telling a story about myself. I remembered how much fear there was in that situation, and that wasn\u2019t part of my story because it was too hard to tell. At that point, they just moved all the kids into the same place. So if you\u2019re a kid and you\u2019re afraid and all these kids around you are dying, you don\u2019t really know what that is, and nobody really talks about it. Nobody in my family visited me, because they were too busy. So it was very, very scary for me. It was too scary to remember it correctly, so I remembered it in a different way\u2014called repression, as the psychiatrists say. So in the film I tried to represent that sound through silence. There is a section right after that where there is no sound. That, in a movie theatre, is scary; it\u2019s very scary when sound is turned off. It\u2019s different on your computer because you\u2019re surrounded by ambient sound, but when you\u2019re in an immersive sound situation and the sound disappears you think: \u201cSomething has happened, something is wrong.\u201d The hairs go up on the back of your neck because you\u2019re thinking, \u201cDid the projector break?\u201d The image is still there but there is no sound. And it\u2019s a very primitive feeling of dread in a way\u2014something broke. I think for me also sound is very connected to true and false memories.<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014When are you going to show the movie?<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014It will be in the cinema at the end of the month, this August. It will go to festivals. Actually for three or four months it will be out and around and then released in movie theatres.<\/p>\n
I like that you\u2019re in a moment of just looking around. I think that\u2019s the greatest moment. The freedom to play different sounds and think, \u201cWhat is it? Is it the beginning of an opera? An installation?\u201d How do you think of imagining what a sound will become? Do you think something might be a beautiful symphony? Or a static sound under a bridge in a park? Or a pop song?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014It\u2019s installations, always in a place, in a room. This is important for me. I\u2019ve thought many times about this idea of making records, but it\u2019s not really my thing. My thing is to build an environment with the sound. The next one is a show I\u2019m doing at the National Library here in Paris. It\u2019s going to be a sound installation.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014What kinds of sounds will be in the library?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014The library has a huge collection of very old recordings from the beginning of the 20th century. It\u2019s called the Museum of the Voice.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Beautiful.<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014It\u2019s really beautiful. They\u2019ve asked me to do something with that, to create an environment.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014What an incredible project!<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014Something I had done in the past was using this recording of the Guillaume Apollinaire [reading his poem] Le Voyageur (The Traveler). The project is about this idea of the traveler and all the voices in the library. I had this idea of the library scene in Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders, all the voices.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014You know, when he was mixing that movie in Cannes he sent me a message saying, \u201cCan you send me some angel fragments? I\u2019m mixing my movie.\u201d I didn\u2019t ask him, \u201cWhat\u2019s an angel fragment?\u201d I just sent him a little selection of things that I thought sounded like angel fragments. I said, \u201cCheck these out and if they work I\u2019ll record them and get you a good copy of them.\u201d I sent him a cassette and he just used the cassette! But the way he used it was so fantastic: he used it as headphone leakage in the scene with a guy on the train.<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014It was beautiful.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014You know, he\u2019s so smart about the use of music and all the different ways it can sound. He\u2019s not a purist in terms of the way the soundtrack lays under the dialogue in a movie. He has sound coming from all sorts of sources and distortions and places\u2014it\u2019s so moving. Instead of having the big, monolithic soundtrack where it\u2019s just about emotional manipulation and it\u2019s like, \u201cHere\u2019s how you feel about this house, here\u2019s how you feel about this character.\u201d You\u2019re helpless. He doesn\u2019t do that with music or sound, and I think he\u2019s one of the geniuses that way. I love hearing how he treats and filters music. I\u2019m very excited about the Museum of Voices, when is that happening?<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014It\u2019s going to be this November.<\/p>\n
Laurie\u2014Coming right up! I\u2019m likely going to be there around that time, so I\u2019ll come check it out! I\u2019ll see you then.<\/p>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\u2014Yes, please do!<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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