audio artexperimentalfield recordings

CD – Swarming

This is the first collaboration between Marc Baron and Eric La Casa, two leading figures in the French and international experimental sound scene. Baron is an electroacoustic composer and live performer, known for his unconventional approach to modified and manipulated playback devices; La Casa is a composer and field recordist, focused on attentive listening to urban and natural environments. The meeting, which brings their respective artistic practices into play, explores the concept of ‘counterfeiting’ as a tool to rethink the relationship between reality and its acoustic representation, while allowing the duo to reflect on their relationship with recording and the archive. In September 2023, inside the Hiventy studios in Joinville-le-Pont – a complex once known as Pathé – the two artists recorded the technical phases of film restoration, from the intervention on the image and soundtrack to the development procedures. Through the observation of mechanical and digital methodologies, and in dialogue with specialised technicians, La Casa and Baron explored the challenges, operational details, and artistic commitment that characterise the recovery of a filmic work. The question that emerges from their work is as simple as it is complex: how can a film be returned to its ‘original’ state? The answer reveals the problematic nature of this aspiration. What the two artists discover is that the very idea of ​​a fixed original is an illusion: every restoration attempt must confront the continuous evolution of our perceptual expectations. It is precisely in this tension between historical fidelity and contemporary expectations that the two experimenters find fertile ground for their investigation into forgery. Back in their studios in Montreuil, they have initiated what they call ‘destructive re-listening sessions’ – a process in which the original recordings are subjected to treatments that deliberately alter their integrity. Baron, with his experience in the manipulation of magnetic tapes and demagnetization processes, created situations of controlled instability, while La Casa documented these moments of transformation and sonic dissolution. The result is a work that questions the processes of conservation using them as raw material for a broader reflection on the ephemeral nature of representation. Contrefaçons thus becomes a sonic paradox: using destruction as a creative method, the two artists reveal how fragile and subjective any claim to authenticity is in the field of sound reproduction.

Marc Baron + Eric La Casa – Contrefaçons