Odysseys

“I wanted these children to understand and feel the path that they should take to follow to get to their own personal story. I began by telling them my Odyssey. How I imagined, worked and invented it. Then I suggested that they find their own similar path.
Together we chose chapters from my Odyssey to help them create their own.
As we searched, we recorded sounds, using everything we could get our hands on: narratives (their own or others from their circle, their family), sounds found on the Internet, cello sounds…
Then we set to work with this material.
I wanted them to gain some awareness of writing in sound. Sounds of nature, the noise of the city, musical instruments… I wanted them to learn how to work up all this material till it led them to a narrative that they authored. I believe that this could introduce them to an important idea: no longer be submissive but use everything around them as material for self-expression.
In this way they developed a sense of form, editing, and the ability to listen sensitively. Also, how much fun it was to mix several disciplines.
In short, I wanted them to use curiosity to unlock their imagination.
Thus, week after week, we imagined the sounds of our dreams that we had hidden away in the rolling of the waves, we chanted our anger and this in turn drove the anger of my cello; we sang in many languages, accompanied songs from long ago.
Abdel-Nasser, Charlotte, Elisa, Emma, Fatma, Ghislaine, Khadijah and Youssouf came to inhabit my Odyssey and made it their own.”

Photo credits : © Walter Films