sonocité 2

sonocity II | Osne-le-Val 2oo8

Malte Martin and Marie-Hélène Fournier repeated their joint project. This time in the strange and magnetic premises of an old industrial cathedral, in the throes of collapse: the old Val d’Osne foundry. Beyond functional, not to say utilitarian perception, to make the character of this old foundry evident, they involved a shift of the eye. Attached to the industrial world — steam-powered sawmill, manufacturing rolls of paper and machinery — Marie-Hélène Fournier wanted to transmit the empathetic experience of her girlhood. Malte Martin, initiated in the behemoths of the metallurgical industry, ever a lover of nighttime walks in electric power stations, maritime ports, refineries, and forges, shares this same fondness. They joined their respective receptivity together, to enable us share in those strange and familiar worlds, at once teratological— myths-with-monsters — and magic, in an installation where neons reinstated the molten metal, and formed Malte Martin’s typographical sculpture. The light was interactive, varying with the expanse and intensity of the work by Marie-Hélène Fournier, played live. In this ghostlike place, sounds and shimmers formed another life…