Monique Jean - Figures du temps (1998-99)

Figures of Time involves the intersection and impact of private and public events. This journey through time is punctuated by graffiti, urban poetry and radio news broadcasts. Three places/spaces and contexts of the word cohabit, as they bear witness to this, our time.

A suite that attempts to draw closer to Tadeusz Kantor's vision of"individual human life, modest and poor, defenceless yet magnificent." As Kantor writes: "It is only in this individual human life that truth,holiness and grandeur are preserved today. They must be saved from destruction and oblivion. Saved from all the powers of this world."

Figures of Time (1998-99) is a radiophonic piece in 4 mouvements :

Figure 1 : un haut-parleur dans le désert (5:50 min.) 1998
Figure 2 : … et les déchets qu'on brûle (7:45 min.) 1998

texts : Denise Desautels, Cimetières/La rage muette
voices : Marie-France Marcotte, Angèle Laberge, Marc Mercier
double-bass : improvisation of Joëlle Léandre

Figure 3 : a farewell to S.O.S. (9:20 min.) 1999
Figure 4 : six zero five nine two three (2:16 min.) 1999

text : Louise Dupré, Noir déjà
voices : Vladimir Krysinski, Waleska Menendes, Petunia Alves, Liliana Nunez.

Realised with the help of the Canada Council for the Arts, Media Arts section and PRIM, Media Arts Centre, Montréal.

Monique Jean (Montreal, Canada) composes in the acousmatic style, and her work is also regularly combined with video, experimental film, dance and installations. A number of her recent works form a cycle in which the voice, stresses and strains, fractures and shocks ot the material bring about a transfiguration of the political into the poetic.

Monique Jean's music can be heard on PEP and empreintes DIGITALes.