For the fifth edition of the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac’s sound residency programme, in partnership with Le Fresnoy – National Studio for Contemporary Arts, the jury has selected the project by the artist Fayçal Lahrouchi.
Reflecting its commitment to and support for the intangible cultural heritage of the cultures it represents and for contemporary creativity, the Musée du Quai-Branly launched a sound residency programme in early 2022 in partnership with Le Fresnoy – National Studio for Contemporary Arts. The scheme provides a grant of 8,000 euros and funding for the production of a sound work designed in connection with the museum’s collections, issues and themes. This creative support programme enables the museum to host, each year, an artist from one of the four continents represented in the museum’s collections (Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas) to carry out a unique artistic project. Following the call for proposals, an international jury comprising leading figures from the world of sound and audiovisual creation selects an artist who is invited to produce an original project consistent with their artistic trajectory and linked to the museum’s tangible and intangible collections.
Once again this year, the residency is being run in partnership with Le Fresnoy – Studio national, which will host two working sessions and support the artist in the production of their sound work. The work will be presented to the public in spring 2027 and will become part of the museum’s collections.
Amazigh Unarchived is a sound art project by the Moroccan artist Fayçal Lahrouchi. Drawing on the Amazigh archives of the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, it examines the circumstances of their creation and what they omit as much as what they reveal. The aim is not to illustrate these archives, but to regard them as unstable materials, permeated by power relations, absences and silences inherited from the colonial context.
The project shifts the focus of listening to the margins: the silences, breaths and sounds off-screen – which reveal the conditions under which the recordings were made – and places them in dialogue with contemporary Amazigh voices, recorded as part of a documentary project set in the locations evoked by the sound archives.
This confrontation aims to create a symbolic and sensory representation, forming part of a ‘sound politics’ approach that questions who is listening to whom today, and from what vantage point. The presentation will take the form of an acousmatic piece or an immersive installation, interwoven with a verbal score developed in collaboration with an Amazigh poet.
Fayçal Lahrouchi is a researcher and sound artist from southern Morocco. His practice lies at the intersection of sound creation, radio documentary and electronic production, with a particular focus on voices, memory, archives and ways of listening. He is also a founding member and co-curator of the Moroccan Association for Electronic Music (AMME), an organisation dedicated to bringing together contemporary and experimental music with Amazigh musical heritage. Through residencies, concerts, exhibitions, workshops and musical productions, AMME is developing a robust body of thought on the future of Amazigh music and the promotion of its rich heritage by bringing it to life.
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WED 25 NOV 2026 — 4.00pm
A talk organised in partnership with CEAC/University of Lille as part of the educational programme, open to the public. Matthieu Raffard has been working as part of an artist duo with Mathilde Roussel since 2017.
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WED 18 NOV 2026 — 4.00pm
A lecture organised as part of the educational programme, open to the public. Cy Lecerf Maulpoix is an author, translator and lecturer in critical theory at the city’s School of Fine Arts (INSEAMM).
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WED 4 NOV 2026 — 4.00pm
Lecture organised as part of the teaching programme, open to the public. Guillaume Chevillon is a professor at ESSEC, where he holds the Chair in Cultural Industries, Art and Creative Technologies and is Director of Metalab for AI, Data and Society, a transdisciplinary research institute dedicated to the societal challenges of artificial intelligence.
