Grand Prix – Contemporary Creation Call 2011

Creation – Cécile Le Talec, French artist born in 1962, living and working in France (in Cher and Paris). Weaving – Atelier A2, Aubusson

Sound and space are the fields of exploration for Cécile Le Talec. “When I first learned about the existence of whistled language, it felt like discovering a treasure… the language of birds spoken by humans: between music and words. (…) Following my encounters with linguistic specialists and ethno-musicologists, I began my ‘expeditions’ and ‘language explorations’ around the world (…). My collaborations and meetings with whistle-blowers have allowed me to create and produce artistic projects that were nourished by whistled language and its extraordinary uniqueness.”

A woven and sonic architectural project, Panoramique polyphonique invites visitors to enter the woven space and its bluish light to listen to a soundtrack mixing bird songs and the whistled language of La Gomera (the silbo), which is inscribed in UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The tapestry evokes a mountain panorama and is an illustration of a spectrogram of bird songs.