He’s talking to me about this rock ten kilometers in diameter. It comes from some unknown location, it’s been hurtling through the cosmos for an undetermined time. He explains to me why the object is likely to have travelled along a continuous, straight trajectory, at a constant speed, and encountering no other object on its path through the void. Then, the Earth’s atmosphere. Three and a half seconds later, the asteroid crashes into the surface destroying 76% of all living things.
He is not present at the moment of the collision, but he’s become obsessed with the event. He wants to find residues that will let him recreate the sound it makes. He seems to believe that the impact created an entire system of tunnels. The stone, like a bullet that has never been removed from the flesh, remains lodged within it. He begins by gathering together a group of explorers to investigate deep underground. They descend, swallowed up for several days in silence and darkness.
Their pupils dilate to the rims of their eyes. The sensitivity of their video camera, deep down. Their entrails howling inwards, outwards. The high-pitched noise they are listening to in the silence is the electronics of the brain. When there is nothing left to perceive, the preamps in their bodies and their recording apparatus listen to themselves. Their footsteps, their stumbling, their breathing, their words, their intestines, their machines. Noisy animals, humans.
The streaming water has brought with it an accumulation of matter. The drops impact like tiny asteroids, always in the same place, craters repeating one after the other.
Seeking one of the most intense sounds ever produced on earth, in almost absolute silence. As if one just needs to start listening to one’s own organs to be able to conjure up any sound. Every search for sound begins by listening to the body.

Crédits

Production : Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains