1 mute video projection, 1 sound video projection, headphones
2 separate FHD videos, 8'33 et 8'24

“Voir ce qui est dit” (Seeing What Is Said) is a work composed of two videos created with Noha El Sadawy, a deaf young woman, during the rehearsals of the Collège de Genève orchestra. Placed along side the conductor at each rehearsal, the signer looked for ways to describe, relate and comment the orchestra in Sign. The direction of an orchestra and Sign are two languages that have nothing, in theory, in common; they inhabit two antagonistic worlds: music and silence. There are however similarities between these two figures; they share both a precise, technical, coded structure and a large part of sensitive expression.

A first video presents a silent montage putting opposite each other the “inductive” gesture of the conductor who drives the sound, and the “receptive” gesture of Sign describing the image of the rehearsal.

The second video is a series of three sequence shots of the performer, corresponding to three pieces played by the orchestra: “Also sprach Zarathustra”, “Swan Lake” and “The Ride of the Walkyries”, famous pieces of background music intrinsically linked to the cinematographic image. A voice over proposes a subjective analysis of the performance, imagines the verbal equivalents of the signed description, points out the language’s construction features and provides indications on how the signer is perceived and transcribes the orchestra and the music.