How to define Bernard Pourrière? A choreographer, a sound hunter, a conductor, a musician; it’s hard to answer.
Bernard Pourrière is above all the man of sound-infused movement. That might be his true definition. A gesture is equivalent to a sound.
The film shot in a spinning mill shows us the ethereal movements of the dancer, the ballerina. The artist is clearly a choreographer here. Bernard Pourrière describes his work: “I would define my research as the quest for impossible sounds.”
The search for the perfect sound, impossible to capture and yet he succeeds. With sound having so many factors to express itself: space, echo, location, Bernard Pourrière synthesizes sounds and makes them audible. This exhibition is composed of works, musical notes, and performances. Sound is both free and constrained in a given space. It goes back and forth, but to what extent? The butterfly theory; the question is posed.
We discover musical scores by the musician whose notes are neither quarter notes, half notes, nor eighth notes. They are lines, dots, Morse code-like signals.
Photos of the workshop, the installation of a drum set where the artist has revisited musical instruments. The previously mentioned video in the spinning mill is the key to understanding this exhibition.
Let’s leave the conclusion to Bernard Pourrière: “The scores are coded according to a grammar of signs equivalent to notes. In fact, they offer me the possibility to improvise in order to provide a wide spectrum of interpretation.” Everything is said in a few words.
Thierry Jan
