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This musical creation, still in process, will last about three hours. For the exhibition, it is reduced, fragmented
and diffused into three different points of the space following the logic of a trip. In the first room, a fifteen
minutes-long extract is broadcast in loop, by little bell shaped speakers designed, to be audible by the visitor
only when he comes under this set.
In the second room, two shorter selections are offered by a cd-player with headphones. It means that it is the
viewer who decides to start up the device and to voyage/sail between both the tracks of the CD.
In the last room, the device is more important (bigger speakers with an audio-bass amplifier) and broadcast
sequentially four short pieces interrupted by long silences. This piece is partially audible from the nearest
rooms in the exhibition space.
Originally, Pierre Yves Macé’s composition has been created as a reference to Walter Benjamin’s Paris,
Capitale du XIXème siècle, and especially to his Parisian passages, which analyse like a witness and are
symbolic of the emergent industrial modernity. It is made quasi-exclusively with samples from the 20s or 30s,
which are conceived like “musical products” and valorised symbolically as emblems of the mass production of
records from the beginning of the 20th century.
All the song voices are systematically erased and the artist keeps only the instrumental introductions, which
become some commonplace melodic formula played by any orchestra or pianist. These samples are treated
by a montage of cuts and superimpositions with a lack of differentiation. Thus it reveals the interchangeable
nature of these samples and echo the collage tradition of the 20th Century avant-gardes. Emptied of their
singularity and of their commercial value, these samples signify simply a nostalgic feeling, undefined and
collective, as Benjamin explained it like the circularity of fashion. The sound contents are by different
transformations precisely located on some samples (stretching, loop, reverberations…) to give back to these
extracts a particularity and to recreate a new form of continuity, which would reveal some potentialities which
had never been realized. Benjamin’s concept of history is one of violence is exerced by the main culture on a
past which left no trace. It is this immemorial past that the “Livre des Passages” tries to underline.
Lives and works Paris
Pierre-Yves Macé creates music which can be seen as a mix between “free music”, pop and contemporary
music. According to him, electronic music is a means to access the deterioration or transformation of acoustic
sound. When applied to traditional musical instruments, Macé’s compositions play with spatialization and
individual interactions between each instrumentalist. He recently collaborated with Sylvain Chaveau, Steven
Hess, Rainier Lericolais and other musicians, and he released two albums Circulation (Sub Rosa / 2005) and
Crash_Test ii (Tensional Integrity) (Orkhestra / 2006). For his contribution to the group show, Bass Diffusion
Model, Pierre-Yves Macé presents an updated version of his work Le Livre des Passages.
discographie
2006 crash_test 2, Orkhêstra (à paraître)
2005 Circulations, Sub Rosa / Nocturne
2002 Faux-Jumeaux, Tzadik / Orkhêstra
COLLABORATIONS
2006 ON, Second Souffle, Brocoli / Cod&S (à paraître)
2005 That Summer, Clear, Talitres / Differ’ant, 2005
EXPOSITIONS
2006 N7-S11, Bétonsalon, Paris
2005 Conférence UFO 2005,  , La Générale, Paris (invitation de Gaëlle Boucand)
CONCERTS
2006 concert, Cabaret sauvage, festival Villette Sonique, Paris - résidence (avec le quatuor Pli), la Fabrique,
Andrézieux
crash_test 2, concert, festival Musiques Innovatrices, Saint-Étienne
2005 Documents, concert, Cabaret aléatoire, festival Engrenages, Marseille –
Circulations, concert, festival Des Rives et des notes, Oloron
2004 résidence et concert (Départition), GRIM, Marseille
résidence et concert (Crash_test), CalArts, Los Angeles et CNMAT, Berkeley, USA
résidence et concert (Placebo consortium), Euphonia, festival Siréne et midi.net, Marseille
