Interferential Divagations

Interferential Divagations is an ambulatory and participatory sound walk along the river of Paris, transmitted on radio waves. Divagations Interférentielles is an ambulatory and participatory sound walk along the river of Paris, transmitted on radio waves. It passes by the highly problematic Algerian war memorial, created in 2023, but sustains itself alongside the Seine, which holds a deeper memory.

Following the interference of radio waves and their random ripples, a sound ballad explores the relationship between memory, music, song, and forgotten voices. Drifting between mundane anecdotes about the city of Paris and its most celebrated monuments, the project resists erasure by hacking problematic French radio waves and vocalising the names of Algerians who died in the Seine in 1961. Their names are transcribed into sounds and ritournelles, almost modal, written into musical score.

Each participant of the sound walk receives the name of an Algerian, hence hopefully developing a special bound with a ghostly life. I created a musical alphabet, which associates each name’s phonemes to a melody. Using all notes, the music contains dissonance, but also harmony, since its core notes are center around an oriental mode.

Radio waves is a media instrumentalised by power forces, especially during the Algerian war, where France took over the radio waves in Algeria, controlling the ears of its inhabitants. Radios synchronise and disynchronise, such as bodies in dissonance or harmony. This unguided, ambulatory, and hypnotic sound walk through the city of Paris thus offers a counter-memorial, navigating between silences and self-censorship.

© All rights reserved, Marie Yevkiné Tirard, member of ADAGP and SACEM