Anne Le Troter, winner 2021

Anne Le Troter (1985) is an artist based in Paris. It was after writing two books, L’ency­clopédie de la matière and Claire, Anne, Laurence, that she began to work cycli­cally on the way the speech of specific groups emerges, by cumu­lating exhi­bi­tions (often acoustic works) that lead to the pro­duc­tion of written plays. Anne Le Troter thus invites groups of people, like ASMR (autonomous sen­sory meridian response) artists, to work with her (L’appé­tence, acoustic instal­la­tion, 2016, Salon de Montrouge and Palais de Tokyo Prize). After working on a form of com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of speech — through a cycle of acoustic instal­la­tions cre­ated around the figure of the tele­phone poll­ster, a cycle spread over two solo exhi­bi­tions and a group exhi­bi­tion (Les mitoyennes at the BF15 in 2015, Liste à puces at the Palais de Tokyo in 2017 and Les silences après une ques­tion at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Villeurbanne in 2017) — today Anne Le Troter’s work is leaning towards the antic­i­pa­tion genre. Invited by the Pernod Ricard Foundation, the Biennale de Rennes, Le Grand Café—Contemporary Art Centre in Saint Nazaire, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and the Centre Pompidou, the artist has begun a new writing cycle, focusing on the idea of biog­raphy, fic­tion and utopia. In 2020, she was awarded the Villa Kujoyama Prize (Kyoto).

Anne Le Troter, view of the per­for­mance Même pas de mots in the instal­la­tion “Parler de loin ou bien se taire”, 2019. Acoustic work, 20 min, instal­la­tion, var­ious mate­rials, vari­able dimen­sions. Production Le Grand Café – Contemporary Art Centre, Saint-Nazaire and Nasher Sculpture Center (US), Collection Centre Pompidou / Photo credit: Hervé Veronese. Courtesy Anne Le Troter & galerie frank elbaz

The artistic pro­ject

A pro­ject for a medico-social radio sta­tion hosted by the authors of anony­mous works ref­er­enced in the Marc Vaux pho­tog­raphy col­lec­tion.

“As I usu­ally work a great deal with sound archives that I pro­duce or dis­cover, I nat­u­rally went looking for them in the Marc Vaux pho­tog­raphy col­lec­tion. I found them in the inter­stices of the pho­to­graphic images, in other words, in the unrecorded nar­ra­tives that exist between these images by anony­mous authors. Just like Marc Vaux, who estab­lished a mutual aid res­i­dence for artists and intel­lec­tuals, these anony­mous authors, whom I would call “Vol­un­teers” will seek to set up a medico-social radio sta­tion to give voice to the images that con­sti­tute this pho­to­graphic col­lec­tion. In a desire to give them an iden­tity, they speak mainly of their bio­log­ical bodies, the bodies of art workers and the con­di­tion they are in.

Hence, with the assis­tance of the med­ical corps, what this radio sta­tion plans to broad­cast is a rereading of art his­tory from 1920 to 2021, viewed through the prism of medicine. The his­tory of medico-social radio is located in the Montparnasse neigh­bour­hood. The tower had a radio wave relay sta­tion in the 1980s and broad­cast local radio sta­tion pro­grammes, par­tic­u­larly 95.2 FM that included: Médico Social, France Lecture, Sport et Musique and the Paris FM2 radio sta­tion. I want to revive Montparnasse’s radio his­tory by inviting actors from Radio Citron, for example (inspired by La Colifata sta­tion), to play the roles of the authors of the anony­mous works that are part of the Marc Vaux pho­tog­raphy col­lec­tion.

Once this medico-social radio sta­tion has been set up, the sound archives cre­ated will be broad­cast in the form of per­formed radio plays that will be audible through acoustic gar­ments. These acoustic gar­ments will be orches­trated by per­formers who will reveal the words spoken by others, like so many portable radios ready to broad­cast the voices of anony­mous authors in the city. Those who spread the words of others will work as antennas or serve as relays.

Starting from the obser­va­tion that sound, voice and speech are intrin­si­cally mobile, and it is ampli­fi­ca­tion that made sound par­tially seden­tary, I would like to offer a mobile acoustic instal­la­tion, out­doors, that works thanks to people who carry the sound with them, people who carry voices with them and who would be willing to host other people’s words on their own bodies. The words would be seen as organs, seeking to bring a society “to life” in our pre­sent world, reviving it by car­rying these voices around.”

© Antonin Horquin. Courtesy Anne Le Troter & galerie frank elbaz