4 Singing Corner's
Research project | Public Art
Residency in Lycée Français and I.F.P., Pondicherry, India, 2017-2018
The 4 SINGING CORNER’S project focuses on the immaterial heritage of singing. Through her travels in India, Cécile Pitois realized that singing is as much a part of everyday popular and religious culture as it is of personal and family life. The 4 projects are independent but complementary. They offer the audience, through a contemporary legend and a sculpture, the chance to take part in a unique experience of individual and collective vocal expression.
Cried Out
New Pier, Pondicherry, India
Story- Legend structure | Starting from the tension that the inhabitants of this city experienced during the colonial era. The story is based on the on-going friendship between children of “Dubash” (trader) families who still often go to the pier shouting or singing together, to release their own day-to-day tension.
Sculpture Proposal | Three black stones engraved with number 1,2 & 3. Foreseen technics : Engraving stones | Text-Legend on enameled lava stones (7 languages).
The Whistling Kiosque
Bharathi Park, Pondicherry, India
Sculpture Proposal | To rebuild a kiosque on the base of one destroyed in 2009, with a bench where people can sit and whistle bird song (story). It could also be used by the Tourist Office for concerts. Anticipated techniques: Either made of scaffolding of sticks + flower creepers (ephemeral) or a permanent solid metal structure. Roof top + holes for the wind to go through. Text-Legend on enameled lava stone
The Singing Tree
Botanical Garden, Pondicherry, India
Story- Legend – extracts | Many moons ago, a huge forest full of hares, peacocks, jackals, mongooses and all sorts of colorful birds lived together harmoniously with a wise man. He had settled by this gigantic tree with his wife and two sons. (…) It is now customary, in this very place, to remember a song or poem
and leave it in the hollow of the tree. Only a single chosen person can hear it from the other side. The saying goes that the tree will carry it beyond borders, far and wide through its roots.
Sculpture Proposal | A giant tree stump where one can sing into a hollow space in order to be heard by someone on the other side | Anticipated techniques: Rocaille – cementing technique, blue pigment, metal spring into the 7-meters tube that distorts sound. Text-Legend on enameled lava stones (7 languages) | Story structure: Based on different types of human communication and solidarity with Nature under extreme circumstances.
From Humming to Satellites
Rainbow Nagar Park, Pondicherry, India
Sculpture Proposal | A “Humming stone” carved in granite shaped like a big loudspeaker. You can either hum into the hole in the stone and it resonates in your body, or put your mobile phone to turn the stone into a natural speaker. Anticipated techniques: Carved granite, sound technique displayed at Svaram Sound Garden in Auroville.
Cécile Pitois worked in several libraries and archives of the city: IFP, Institut Français de Pondicherry, The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, INTACH and EFEO, Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient. This fieldwork and accumulated research led to the elaboration of a “tale”. The relationship Cécile Pitois weaves between a visual work of art, its underlying story, and the ritual around it enables her to express her artistic intention and the originality of her work.
First, Cécile Pitois followed a pragmatic and intuitive process that involved exploring a particular area in order to identify a powerful feature or determine a specific angle of work before developing and refining this guiding thread through a series of investigations. To this end, her approach is based not only on documentary research but also on encounters that give her an opportunity to glean information about the location, its history and its social interactions.
The first phase of research is taking place partly within the “Lycée Français de Pondicherry” . Students, teachers and staff members are invited to propose a spontaneous “guided tour” of their neighbourhood to Cécile Pitois. She organises a pedestrian outing in order to discover some statues, commemorative sculptures in Pondicherry with Terminale Pro class. Each student introduces one of these famous figures and shares one of their quotes. The artist gives a commentary on that sculpture’s configuration in space (plinth, scale, etc…).
