Anne Le Troter’s exhibit at Bétonsalon struck me with its use of placement, sound, and technology. The placement of the speakers, benches, chairs, drawings, and melted metal all had so much thought and intentionality to them. Anne le Troter had to play with the space to allow for sound to be heard throughout without letting any of the individual sounds overpower another. The benches are laid out along the three major walls with the windows making up the final side. It was quite amazing to see how these benches, whose bottoms were made from speaker wires, were able to support the weight of people. The melted metal placement was quite puzzling for me, especially at first glance. I didn’t see much reason for some parts but as I spent more time in the space, I felt as though much of the longer pieces acted as guides for how I should be maneuvering myself as I observe the art pieces and sound art. As well as that, I really enjoyed how many of the strands came together to make body like figures that convey emotion. The drawings themselves were placed in quite an interesting manner. All of them were quite small, coercing the viewer to step up and stand within a foot or two to really observe all the details. Not only that, some pieces were hung around 10-12 feet up, and so your perspective was from quite a low angle – this often played into the piece’s meaning as Anne Le Troter wanted your viewing experience to come from this position.

Sound art is quite a new medium for me as this exhibit was one of my first encounters with it. My first impression as I walked was confusion, but after spending a few moments with each individual sound, more and more meaning started coming through. Many of the pieces interacted with the drawings and changed how you perceived them. Names were shouted out, lots of chewing was heard, and there was much dialogue in French. The voices are of nurses, caregivers, firefighters, and a few other professions. What ties them all together is their background in some form of art. The dialogue covers a number of issues such as the struggles many of these people faced with government programs. An effect the space had on the sound for me was the confusion of source. When I walked in, it seemed like some of the sounds were coming from speakers in the ceilings but after some more examination it was in fact all coming from the floor or window speakers. I’m curious if anyone else had this experience.

The technological features of the exhibit are what really blew me away. A computer was connected to every individual speaker through a series of cables shooting out of the wall. These cables, guided by some hooks, made their way across the entire room. What was most interesting, though, was that they did not connect directly to the speakers. There was melted tin alloy in between that carried the sound signals. I didn’t even know such a utilization of signals could be used so it was very cool to be seeing it implemented. Another interesting tech feature was the use of the windows to emit sound. Speakers attached to the window emitted sound using vibrations from the pane itself. This was an ingenious way to also connect the outside with the inside.

Bétonsalon is a center for contemporary art and research. It was founded in 2003 by Mélanie Bouteloup, the director until 2020. She was replaced by Émilie Renard last year. The center moved locations a couple times before finding its home where it presently resides in the 13th arrondissement. The mission of center is, in essence, to be an experimental place that is combative towards discrimnation, a welcoming site in its neighborhood, a living archive, a training hub, and “a refuge where bodies and voices find their place, where sev­eral lan­guages are spoken, and where we can think, see, hear, feel, imagine, share and enlarge on a mul­ti­tude of world views.” The workshops held at Bétonsalon are open to everyone from children as young as 7 to students to adults. Bétonsalon takes the time to curate visits differently depending on which group is visiting. From 2016 to 2022, the institution also had a second site associated with them – Villa Vassilieff. The Villa, located in the 15th, was intended to revive the deep history the building had as a studio created a century ago. The Villa Vassilieff project was aimed at diversifying art histories through exhibitions as well as a residency program for four artists, curators, or researchers every year. Unfortunately, funding was cut back in 2020. Total funding by the city of Paris was cut by 30,000 euros and so Villa Vassilieff closed its doors. Another interesting annex/program of Bétonsalon is Académie Vivante. It’s an experimental research laboratory space co-led by Bétonsalon and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. It is set up in the Epigenetics and Cell Destiny Unit of Paris-Diderot. The academy invites artists to work in the laboratory with a specific research theme in mind. The artists benefit from leading technology, an impressive team around them, and leading experimental teaching programs.They often put out seminars for the public from a wide range of interesting topics such as metabolism or 3D printing.

Who is Anne Le Troter? Born in 1985 in Saint-Étienne, she is now a Paris-based artist. She studied at École supérieure d’art et design Saint-Étienne and Haute École d’art et de design Genève. She works mainly with sound art, collecting and editing sound materials she encounters in daily life. She is interested in language and orality. She often will take recordings of commonplace language and then deform or stretch them to abstraction. Her current work leans toward the anticipation genre. Anticipation designates a work whose action takes place in the near future and whose drivers are technology and science fiction.

My favorite piece was one of the higher hung drawings. It included a nose from a low angle as well as what appears to be a person and a speaker. What I like about it is how I went through the entire exhibit and then only noticed it at the end because it was eye-level. Once I saw it though, I started noticing the other drawings hung up higher on the walls. This added much more depth to the exhibit and as well as much more pondering into the deeper meanings.