FLOATING SOUND GALLERY
Vienna
Valentin Sismann
Circuit Fantôme Season 6curated by Anton Iakhontov (Patrick K.-H.) and Daniel Teruggi.
Valentin Sismann (born in 2002 in France) develops a practice that combines acousmatic composition and video. He explores the idea of expanded music, where sound and visuals are expressed in ways that are either poetic, narrative, or conceptual. His works focus on our relationship with technology, particularly recording media, which he questions and manipulates within critical or imaginary spaces.
Octophonic performances + artist talk:
Part I
Éparpauses (2025 - 10’41)
Erosia (2025 - 17’10)
Abimie (2026 - 15’)
Morphaime (2024 - 9’48)
Mémoroses (2022 - 9'13’)
Part II
Nuaginaire (2025 - 13'04)
Résurrecson (2023 - 10'56)
Sonctuaire (2025 - 12'01)
Éparpauses (2025, Loving Spaces Cycle - 10’41)
In this canvas, a silhouette slips away, dresses and breaks into pieces. Scattered pauses and rubble intertwine; delicately weave themselves into a rain, which like gauze, unfolds. Dotted with spaces, it becomes fragile, tactile and then vanishes. Memory, silence.
Erosia (2025, Cycle of the Same Journey - 17’10)
Beneath the cliffs, the sea crackles. Secret life of the waves, of the wind, without anyone, existing. Outside, a shitstorm of machinery and bodies. Consuming. A pseudo-embodiment of the living. Two impressions of the same show. Erosion, scum. Autophagy is fantastic. Especially in music: "l'art se nique".
Abimie (2026, Cycle of the Same Journey - 15’)
Memories come to life when you believe in them. Magic, too. But in a lantern, why? By pulling too hard on the pulleys, the magic lantern breaks. The images freeze. So, a huge machine whines, groans. And, in this goddamn darkness, there’s no way to help it, or even to know what it is. Humans drain it of its sound; it’s wrecked on the spot, "abimée".
Morphaime (2024, Loving Spaces Cycle, Mastering by Diar Zasella - 9’48)
For Audrey Colard
Acousmatic refers to a listening situation in which, for the listener, the sound source is invisible. “He who loves blinds himself to what he loves”, said Plato. I love you and I blind myself to it, but this time by composing. It's the search of a meaning and a form to this love. I look for a morpheme and then try to seize a space, the time of a piece.
Mémoroses (2022, Loving Spaces Cycle - 9'13’)
Pieces of existence ripped from life, deliberately desecrated to exercise the artist's lie. All these true and holy memories, fugitive but free, for eternity, will be fixed sounds, crucified sounds.
Nuaginaire (2025, Cycle of Thoughts - 13'04)
Everything is clear, and yet... From the earth, life invents a kind of ascension. A simple air to get lost in like an imaginary cloud.
Résurrecson (2023, Cycle of Thoughts - 10'56)
Children, carriers of these ravages that do not reveal their names. Scream and curse, in one time, two spaces, three movements. Silence.
Sonctuaire (2025, Cycle of Thoughts - 12'01)
The sky shatters, breaks into its own reflection in beams of dead lights. Brutal colours emerge from the wound, revealing images, scars of landscapes.
Supported by Stadt Wien Kultur / Bundesministerium für Wohnen, Kunst, Kultur, Medien und Sport / Goethe Institut, funded by the European Union (Culture Moves Europe)
