Conversation 01 — Listening Under Conditions of Fragmentation — Alexis Paul
- May 16
- 3 min read
Yerevan. June, 2026
Alexis Paul France Conversation
Conversation 01
Alexis Paul
Paris, France
Cycle I — Instability of Reality
Developed through questions surrounding listening, displacement, sonic memory, transmission, and the relationship between sound and environment, this conversation examines how auditory practices shape conditions of perception before meaning becomes verbalized or stabilized.
Working across nomadic research, mechanical instruments, folk memory, field recording, textile structures, and experimental sonic environments, Alexis Paul’s practice opens broader questions surrounding atmosphere, mediation, cultural continuity, technological transformation, and fragmented contemporary realities. Rather than approaching sound as isolated artistic production, the conversation investigates listening as a condition through which environments, histories, tensions, absences, and forms of memory become perceptible before they are fully translated into language.
Selected Materials
A selection of documentary materials, instruments, environments, recordings, visual fragments, research traces, and archival references connected to the development of the conversation.
Artist ALEXIS PAUL. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The conversation examines listening not as passive reception, but as an active condition shaping how environments are perceived, organized, remembered, and inhabited. Particular attention is given to forms of listening emerging within unstable, fragmented, displaced, or technologically mediated realities.
Artist ALEXIS PAUL. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Questions surrounding cultural transmission emerge throughout the conversation through instruments, oral traditions, field recordings, material traces, migration, and fragmented sonic inheritances moving across different linguistic, geographic, and historical environments.
Artist ALEXIS PAUL. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The conversation approaches folk memory not as nostalgic preservation, but as a living and unstable field continuously transformed through displacement, mediation, technological circulation, reinterpretation, and loss.
Mechanical organs, perforated systems, sonic devices, and experimental instrumental structures appear throughout the conversation as environments through which memory, automation, repetition, rhythm, fragility, and cultural continuity become materially visible.
The conversation investigates how sound constructs atmosphere, orientation, emotional architecture, spatial perception, and collective experience. Sonic environments are approached as cultural and political conditions shaping perception before interpretation becomes conscious or verbalized.
Audiovisual Material: Un oiseau guérissant
(A Healing Bird)
A visual and sonic work developed by Alexis Paul and directed by Noé Grenier exploring movement through sound, space, atmosphere, and fragmented listening environments.
Constructed as a travelling melody moving across mechanical organ, guitar, and recorder flute, the work approaches music as a migrating presence rather than a fixed composition. The camera follows the movement of the melody itself rather than human protagonists, creating a shifting geography of instruments, bodies, architectural spaces, and sonic environments.
The piece forms part of a broader research project titled Adorcismes, examining transmission, embodiment, healing rituals, mechanical instruments, and the movement of musical compositions across different performers, environments, and material conditions.
Filmed across multiple locations in France including Saint-Maximin Church (Metz), Saint-Jean d’Orbestier Abbey (Les Sables d’Olonne), and the Sterbouest Tide Mill in the harbor of Lorient.
Alexis Paul is a French musician, composer, and sound artist working across experimental music, performance, field research, mechanical instruments, and sonic environments. His practice develops through nomadic investigation, oral traditions, archival traces, folk memory, and contemporary forms of listening emerging across fragmented cultural and geographic conditions. His work has been presented internationally through performances, research collaborations, audiovisual projects, and interdisciplinary artistic contexts examining sound, atmosphere, displacement, transmission, and perception.
Credits
Conversation Development
ZaBell
Artist in Conversation
Alexis Paul
Editorial Direction
Ani Asatryan
Visual Documentation
Vaghinak Ghazaryan
Audiovisual Development
SpinIdeas × ZaBell
Institutional Collaboration
Institut français d’Arménie
Production Support
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Archival Materials
Courtesy of Alexis Paul
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