‘Arc’ – Julien Desprez

Solo for electrical arc, electronics, with dismembered guitar and tap dance.

‘Arc’ is a performance revealing the intimate links between electricity and the intensity of human feelings.

Thanks to a device of electrical arcs irradiating the performer and the scenic space, the stage is transformed into an organic and living object, highlighting the electrification of our lives. Both on a technological and emotional level.
Through this link between electric current and emotions, ‘Arc’ explores one of the paradoxes of our contemporary societies: the individual need to live more and more intensely in the face of a hysterization of society producing the collapse of this same intensity.
From this paradox, ‘Arc’ creates a vortex in permanent tension, always changing its shape in order not to collapse and lose its intensity. Within it, time is twisted, curved, densified, relaxed, compressed under the perception of the spectator.

The electrical arc, a sound and visual phenomenon

The so-called ‘electrical arc’ is a phenomenon during which the electric current, passing from one point to another in the air, becomes visible. This phenomenon covers both the electric spark and the lightning as well. Julien Desprez creates, in collaboration with Nicolas Canot, instruments whose base is an electrical arc; modules where the sound, as well as the light, are generated directly by electricity itself. One of the modules can be used in a percussive form, the other in a polyphonic form.

Other sound elements

Voice, tap dance, electric guitar, electronics dialogue with the arcs to give them a new dynamic. This heterogeneous ensemble moves through several aesthetic territories.
From the softest pop to the most violent noise, the music is built like an electrical arc moving in the air. Always looking for a way to sustain its intensity.

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