Alan Affichard

Installation

Solid State Forces sets out to explore the complex relationships between mining activity and the development of new technologies – in this case, coal. The driving force behind the industrial revolution, coal mining also marked a turning point in the history of listening, with the invention of the coal microphone around 1870. Although the use of this resource is gradually dying out in Europe, it has left whole regions transformed, at once ecologically and socio-economically. What has become of these places? What memories still remain?

To examine these transformations, Alan Affichard took sound recordings at various mining sites across France, Belgium, Germany and Poland. These included slag heaps, redeveloped wastelands and mines still-in activity. Moving across these spaces, the aim was to capture their sonic expressions and record, at different scales, the forces that inhabit them, whether geological, human, animal or electromagnetic. These recordings gave rise to the creation of a living archive, the matrix for a series of sound compositions deployed in a multi-channel installation.

Inspired by the pithead baths (“salle des pendus”), this installation brings together several sound devices, all controlled by the same archive. PA systems, megaphones, mining relics and brass band instruments – among these objects we find an orchestra of speakers putting out compositions that constantly evolve, sliding into one another as they active electrical intensity, mechanical movement and pneumatic power.

A vinyl record with the same name accompanies the project, marking the start of a series all about the extraction of resources and the technologies they shape.

Alan Affichard

In his work, Alan Affichard questions the place of sound practices in contemporary art and their possible points of friction with craft, science and new technologies. The fruit of meticulous research, the sound devices and instruments he makes bring into play physical and acoustic forces as a method of musical composition. They are activated in the form of performances or immersive installations, the aim being not only to explore new ways of producing sound, but also to propose new ways of listening to it.

After obtaining a DNSEP in France at the École supérieure des beaux-arts de Nantes (2016), he joined the Berlin Program for Artists, Berlin (2017), and then did a Post-Master on sound practices at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2018-2019).

Production

Credits