Jean-Luc Guionnet

Jean-Luc Guionnet studied philophy of art and visual arts at the Sorbonne (Paris 1). He then got commited to music and sound art through sound installations (“Reflected Waves” or “Stones, Air, Axioms : fèn te ko ro, nka kow bè ro kolo ntè”), electroacoustic compositions and tape music (“Non Organic Bias”, “Tournures Cessent”), music for stage performances (“Ce qui dure dans ce qui dure” with Lotus Edde Khouri) instrumental compositions (“Distances Ouïes Dites”) and musical improvisations (organ solos, sax solos, “Hubbub”, “Ames Room”). He also did several programs for the national french radio (France Culture – ACR) about sound and listening. These various work are published in many musical label all over the world (“Ground Fault”, “Potlatch”, “Empty Editions”, “Hibari”, …). Along with this sonic activity, through drawing he pursues his visual art practice, and he develops a theoretical work through a series of texts about metaphysics, sound and art that he uses to give lectures in french and english (Transmedial, Glasgow University, EHESS, etc.).

“My work divides itself into as many ways, as occasions arise for me to think and act with sound and drawings. These occasions have a strong connection with an outside element: an instrument (saxophone), a theoretical question (what is “rumour”?), and especially a collaborating friend (Franck Gourdien, Lotus Edde Khouri … Seijiro Murayama) … There then follows a collection of themes which, in turn, influences the evolution of the work and defines the direction of meetings to come: the thickness of the air, the pidgin, the musical instrument considered as affective automaton, listening dark unto itself, the algebra of and in hearing, sound as a signature of space, signature of objects, signature of what it is not… the fact that French uses the same word – le temps – for time and weather, propagation and spread of forms in time etc. The emotion I look for is made out of all these strata and the sliding of one over the other.” – Jean-Luc Guionnet