CD – Swarming

After the jihad attacks in November 2015, a large part of the spaces of the public buildings in Paris were reprojected with the addition of resistant metal bars at the entrances. This initiative was solving some practical problems of public order and somehow it started up a civil ritual of symbolic huge impact, under the forms of “media event”, whose cover actually came to saturate the tv and paper offer, with twists between the various information media, both digital and traditional. Eric La Casa immediately underlined the rhetoric of the clash of civilizations of this cultural trauma and how the theme of the security was actually just a cover for a system of social control more and more pervasive and authoritative. “From what and from whom are we protecting ourselves?” This is the very first question, simple and essential, the author makes, also insisting that these steel obstacles were installed, without any prior consultation and without any indication being given to citizens about how long they would remain in force. Eric La Casa declares he was also very interested in understanding how these “items” were interpreting the city, as they were also provided with perceptions and sensitivity, apparently a bizarre concept, which had actually some eminent predecessors in the French surrealists, authors as Louis Aragon, André Breton and Marcel Noll, who already in the mid-twenties poetically equated architecture, places and streets with agglomerations having their own specific nature. Once again, the urban space is explored, evaluated, observed and dug through the filter of the artistic vision, that in this case is not neutral at all, not just esthetic, and does not offer any superficial activism. To win the metropolitan labyrinth, it’s necessary to get through it, acknowledging a status also to the items, questioning the same perception of the reality, enlarging the notion of daily life, with the recording of the background noises, the resonances and the inaudible. So, we are still in the middle of the 20th century avantgarde, that maybe did not keep all its promises, but not even it’s out of syntony of the times, and it manages to be still related with the collective conscience in the social groups, working as a method of receptiveness and opening to the others and to the world. In Barri​è​res Mobiles Eric La Casa presents four tracks and three “silences of 10, 20 and 30 seconds as moments of intermission between the main tracks. They set up scenarios, who are at the same time disturbing, ethereal and slightly claustrophobic, although the audio captures were mostly collected in open spaces, such as for example the Parc de La Villette. The need for a silent security in the everyday life get still questioned: this does not change the destinies of the people, but it’s still something to hold on to.

 

Eric La Casa – Barri​è​res Mobiles