Words are the raw material of Dominique Petitgand’s (1965) work: sequences of words, extracts of recordings he makes of various people (often the same people). These fragments of voices are cut up, isolated, repeated, associated with other bits of sound (musical or vocal) and presented in multiple forms: records, radio broadcasts, listening sessions in darkness (like a “cinema for the ear”) or else installations of several loudspeakers arranged in the exhibition space.

Commissioned by Mudam for its collection, the installation of five loudspeakers and subtitles La porte ne s’est pas ouverte (The door didn’t open)
(2008/2009) presents a voice combined with various sound sequences. The piece describes a moment of fear and upset: “La porte ne s’est pas ouverte (The door didn’t open) is the story of a precise moment when for the character, who is a child, everything plunges into something totally unknown, when fear settles in. This fear is completely imaginary and it disappears as quickly as it arrives. The anecdote on which the work is based is not the centre of the installation; I could have used a completely different situation. The anecdote simply serves as a support for the idea that everything can vacillate.”