Akousma Trilogy

The Akousma Trilogy now includes three pieces: a film Akousma Part I, an artist’s book and a series of 36 original drawings Akousma Part II in addition to a film Akousma Part III.

of one body, through the walls of another, the trajectory of an unfathomable rumour

Akousma is a transmedia trilogy exploring processes of translation and interpretation between several disciplines such as parapsychology, drawing, dance and cinema. The three parts establish a chain of collaborations in which each person involved becomes a receiver-transmitter of the memory of a place closely linked to women and their confinement.

Evoking the idea of total art, the work originates from the collective experience of a paranormal investigation conducted over two nights with La Nuit du Chasseur (Recherches sur l’invisible), a team of ghost hunters, in the building that now houses the Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier, in January 2020.

Each part offers a transcription and a unique perspective on this experience. Part I is an experimental film shot with a subjective camera, retracing the investigation during which the history of the place is gradually revealed. Playing on psychological tension and the imagination of the audience rather than on special effects, this feature film oscillates between documentary and fiction.

Part II is an artist’s book designed in the form of an archive file. It contains three booklets corresponding to the three acts of the first film, in which the words and sounds of the film are transcribed. Drawings based on images of documents related to the location, taken from the Hérault departmental archives, punctuate the text and expand its imagination.

Filmed in the choreographic centre’s theatre, Part III is a short fiction film based on the artist’s book, which is transformed into a score to be played. Bordering on the absurd, the film is an incursion into the mind of a character subjected to paranormal phenomena. Stuck between the world of the living and the world of the dead, the sole protagonist attempts to communicate with potential presences in the hope of finding an answer that will help him escape his haunting.

Akousma establishes a kind of exorcism of a charged place, with each collaborator acting as a caregiver. The trilogy moves back and forth between a building and its exterior, bringing into play the psyche of its occupants and their interaction with it. Its various translations and interpretations of the initial experience also raise the question of the uniqueness of the work and individual creation, thus emphasising the choice to let oneself be guided and carried away by the Other.