Réponse(s)

The installation Réponse(s) is the result of a trip to Volterra led by Lucile Brosseau and Juliette Kempf in August 2018, during which they explored the ruins of the San Girolamo asylum, seeking poetry in the nooks and crannies of these ruined landscapes. At the foot of the devastated walls, in an ephemeral, ritualistic, and poetic act, they placed the recordings of the 52 responses—recorded by patients and caregivers at Saint-Jacques Hospital and brought from Nantes—within the space. The songs, voices, and echoes fill the abandoned site, responding to the censored letters.

Réponse(s) is a transportable, freestanding installation measuring six square meters by two meters in height—black cotton walls mounted on a metal frame—featuring an initial photographic series on its exterior surfaces. The viewer is then invited to enter, accompanied by a soundtrack, and to discover the interior of the “black box,” where images and words, from one side to the other, respond to one another…

The Réponse(s) installation is designed to accompany the performance Lettres Vives at its various venues. It can be set up in a theater exhibition space or a partner venue for a period ranging from several days to several weeks around the performance(s).

It can also be presented as a standalone exhibition.

July 2018, Psychiatry Department of the public hospital, Nantes, France

Those who are there—patients, caregivers—give voice to words intended for letters that go unanswered; they offer them up in a moment of sound recording.

August 2018, ruins of the former asylum, Volterra, Italy

The responses are left one morning at the foot of the crumbling walls of the abandoned site. It is the sound that rises; with its elusive nature, it repopulates the place, mingling with the songs of the animals celebrating summer, ushering in the azure sky. The voices cleanse the stone. Sound becomes breath. It rises, like smoke leaving no trace, toward the crumbling ceiling, toward the opening door, toward another sky. The voices of those living today ricochet from one wall of yesterday to another, answering the deafening silence of the past century. They are a caress for the place, an embrace of decay. The voices bring the rusted metal bars to life. Then they burst with dawn and daybreak; they are perfumed with daylight. With forgotten songs.