Mélissa Lavabre
UnƧightly [Sound Poetry] online Nov 19th:
As Méli(ssa) Lava(bre)
Fatiguée
Seeking to convey my state of tiredness through sound itself rather than meaning, while actually using a word that DOES mean "tired" - "fatiguée" - but ridding it of its conventional use, making that irrelevant (I could just as well have repeated the word "pumpkin" or most any sequence of phonemes) to only express its sensation in my body.
Discourse on Sound Poetry - Part 2
Part 2 of 4 of Discourse on Sound Poetry in sound poem form.
More information on UnƧightly [Sound Poetry]
Installation On-site June 3rd:
Found Sound Station
Come have a seat and travel places with me! Sit down, let the speakers tell you a story. This is my aural slide show, collected sounds from various strolls and explorations. Come get immersed in some of the places I've been, from the K-Mart in Burbank to the ferry dock in Plymouth, and many places in between. Enjoy my variety show of moments and times captured in some of my documentarian hunts for fleeting impressions. (Last night, I had a dream I was wearing a crop top that read in Sharpie-written font "DOCUMENTARIAN")
Performance On-site June 3rd :
Impressions 1
Zoning out, droning out. Shifting, modulating sounds, layering sounds to form new sounds, slow and quiet pace. This one is for contemplatives and minimalists.
Soundscapes [audio tracks] On-site June 3rd and online June 11th:
K-Mart Key Me
One of my favorite activities is to stroll around and record sound scenes I find interesting with my little Zoom recorder. This recording was captured at the K-Mart in Burbank around 2016. It is the KeyMe machine duplicating a key. Time stops for me as I become hyper aware of all the sounds and nothing but the sounds. Found sounds offer a unique fleeting quality, they capture a time and place aurally, that can never be repeated exactly. Random sounds are juxtaposed like radio stations playing at once. Here, it’s "Tell It To My Heart" in the background store speakers, a conversation between a mother and daughter, the beeps of the cash register, and of course the star of the show, the KeyMe machine and its unique harmonics. This recording is unaltered, unfiltered, just a documentation of getting my keys duplicated one afternoon of 2016 in Burbank at K-Mart. As dull and ordinary an event it is, it is still completely unique.
Flagstaff Train Crossing
I love the sounds of American trains. There is a certain quality in their tones, a sort of nostalgic, obsolete, haunting timbre that I imagine partially unchanged since the 1800s. Departures, comings and goings, transportation of goods and people and news across the immense land... This recording is of the train crossing in Flagstaff, one summery Saturday night somewhere around 2014, captured in one of my hunts for fleeting impressions.
Earmaginations [silent videos] On-site June 3rd and online June 11th:
Water and Light #1
Abstraction can be found all around. We only perceive a human version of reality through our unique human perceptors, our unique human senses and brain translation of the vast mysterious universe. If we were a fly, a speck of dust, an octopus, you name it, our perception of reality would be very different. At times, things can present themselves in a more abstract form than usual. Perhaps we notice the textures in particular, the way light plays with a surface, patterns, etc. Here I became entranced with the interplay of sun, sound and water.
Water and Light #2
Colored lights of the night city, constant flow, rain drops blurring the shapes of things, contours getting diffused. Abstraction and wonder found driving through busy, rainy L.A. Ordinary. Extraordinary. Just light and water and movement.
More information on the June 3rd On-site Event
More information on Soundscapes & Earmaginations
About the artist:
Mélissa Lavabre grew up atop a limestone cliff in the South of France and has now spent half her life in Los Angeles. She's a multi-media artist interested in documenting the fleetingness of all things, laughing at how seriously the insignificant human ants like to take themselves, and questioning all conventions and sense of meaning. Our sense of what is true and valid is so limited by our limited human perception, the conventions of the realm we grew up in, etc. If we see it all as a clown act, what is left?
Artist Location: Los Angeles, CA
Social Media: Artist Website
