Here, there and everywhere

Where to land?

Based on Bruno Latour's books Where to land? How to navigate today's politics? and Where am I? Lockdown lessons for earth dwellers, this scientific, political and artistic experiment involves Bruno Latour, a group of forty inhabitants of Indre and Haute Vienne, along with several philosophers, architects, reseachers and artists.... Stage director Chloé Latour is the artistic director, alongside Jean-Pierre Seyvos, composer, and Sohei Hajmirbaba, architect and cartographer.

Les Epopées joined this project in December 2020 at the invitation of Jean-Pierre Seyvos. Their intervention is twofold: musical and vocal workshops with the group of inhabitants, as well as the final performance of Jean-Pierre Seyvos' composition Critical Zone for the project's finale.

This project led to a filmed performance in Saint-Junien in April 2021.

Critical zone

This project evolved from meeting philosopher Bruno Latour during the Where to Land? pilot project, conducted in Haute-Vienne in 2020 with local inhabitants. Les Epopées joined this project in December 2020.

Critical zone is the title of a cycle written by Jean-Pierre Seyvos in which the term Critical Zone has a double meaning: first, to signify the territory inhabited by humans and all living organisms whose interactions create and maintain that habitat's viability, and second, to signify the state of this zone - a critical state according to scientists today - and the danger posed to our habitat by human activity.

The devised work will be the result of this double meaning. Consisting of a cycle of pieces in succession, or more exactly, like a cycle of successive creations, the various movements will unfold, sometimes in succession and sometimes simultaneously.

This cycle of pieces doesn't aim to reproduce the interactions of living organisms in the critical zone, but rather to suggest audio and musical metaphors to sensitise us to our 'new world'.

It is an operatic composition, which through staging and sound creates a world where innumerable voices combine and intermingle constantly, creating a varying soundscape as unpredictable as it is permanent.

This project will adapt to its location for each instalment. The basic principal (shared and participative creativity) will remain unchanged, but the musical material will evolve depending on the input from different groups of inhabitants, children and associations from different territories, each affected by different problems.

The music will be created during workshops with Les Epopées musicians (2 viols, 1 bassoon, 1 organ and 1 solo singer), a vocal ensemble from the Paris CRR (made up of singers from the ancient music department), and an amateur vocal ensemble made up of children and adults from the specific region. Olivier Duperron will be in charge of electroacoustic sound design. Stéphane Fuget will be the general director.

This programme was partly created in Saint-Junien in April 2021. The final production will take place on the Sénart national stage in Autumn 2022. We are currently looking for new partners and regions to embark on new iterations of this project.