Installation / Performance / Video

Documentation of performances, installations and video works.

A Body of Revolutions, A Body of Latency

A Body of Revolutions, A Body of Latency is a sound lecture performance responding to ideas of analog haunting, positioning analog tape loops as recursive temporal structures without beginning or end. A loop is a haunting we encounter like a ritual; it is mutable, folding in on itself. Each revolution is archived on the fragile magnetic tape, reconfiguring ritual as a slow becoming. Working with voice, analog and digital tape loops, live mixing and selected handmade instruments, Grace guides listeners through how analog loops resist digitally perfect beginnings, middles and ends, instead reshaping the sonic tradition of loops as a haunting and ever-unfolding ritual. These loops are a present moment, slowly unfolding themselves toward a yet-unheard future.

This work was part of “Epiphany”, a performance showcase held at Holy Trinity Church in London, UK, centring on themes of how technology can act as a mediator for ritual, and how it might shift our understandings of tradition and ritual.

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Loss is the Echo of a Smoked Out Bird After a Wildfire

Loss is the Echo of a Smoked Out Bird After a Wildfire is a sonic meditation on the question “what is the acoustic ecology of loss?”. In response to the increasing severity of wildfires across protected landscapes in North America, this project transforms a speculative acoustic ecology of a wildfire into an expanded listening piece. Ecological loss and tape loops are cycles. From total devastation something new begins to grow; a loop starting again, but a warble is present.

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Rituals I Can’t Complete

Rituals I Can’t Complete is a continuation of Devastation/Negative Weaving crossing sound performance, built and found object, and drawing. Rituals I Can’t Complete focuses on the low tech and ordinary objects as sonic instruments with which to construct haunting meditations that articulate breakage and variance within repetitive loop, and ritualization of labour.

And a Cold Wind Blows, installation view at Gallery 4009 (detail) Sheet metal instrument, installation view at Gallery 4009 (detail) Forged bell, wind maker instrument and found metal object, installation view at Gallery 4009 (detail) Forged bells, installation view at Gallery 4009 (detail)

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Devastation/Negative Weaving

Devastation/Negative Weaving is an evolving sonic sculpture and on-going sonic performance series. With a focus on the electro-acoustic, analog and low tech, Devastation/Negative Weaving is a sonic palimpsest (something that which has been altered but a residue of the former iteration can be still be heard) using an ever-changing tape loop, sonic performance and contact microphones to suggest an inherent linkage between drone, myth and ritual.

Installation view of Ground Floor 2024, on view at Hyde Park Center from December 7, 2024 to March 16, 2025, photography by Eugene Tang.
Installation view of Ground Floor 2024, on view at Hyde Park Center from December 7, 2024 to March 16, 2025, photography by Eugene Tang.
Devastation/Negative Weaving
Devastation/Negative Weaving (detail)
Devastation/Negative Weaving (detail)
Devastation/Negative Weaving (detail)

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For the Northern Coast

For the Northern Coast is an aural love letter to Alberta, Canada’s complex relationship between it’s greed for natural resources and the inherent beauty in the wind that rips across the frozen prairies.

For the Northern Coast (installation detail)
For the Northern Coast (installation detail)

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About — About Grace Papineau-Couture
Sound Work — Sound compositions.
Graphic Scores & Handmade Instruments — Graphic scores/experimental notation and handmade instruments.