Lauren Tortil
Lauren Tortil was born in 1986. She lives and works in Lyon (FR).
“I wander. From a known elsewhere to an indistinct other. There is always a starting point, the first breath, and a traversed zone: a physical and mental experience to be shared. It is not so much the destination that matters to me but the changing states to be perceived. If I were to anticipate a design through a determined trajectory, I would wish for unpredictable shifts. To play the game of setting a goal while remaining open to the unexpected. I now find this unexpected element in the very instability of sound phenomena. Sound, my preferred material, cannot be controlled—or at least, I desire it to remain uncontrollable. The only power I allow myself is to define setups, installations, or listening situations that create a sense of being together: a dynamic relationship between a space, the sound that propagates within it, and the bodies of perceiving subjects as listener-actors of their own auditory experience. What configurations should be proposed to enable both an individual and collective auditory experience? How can this deeply personal experience also become intensely public and shared, and vice versa? What spatial situations can be created so that sound, space, and the listener maintain an active relationship? My approach is nourished by readings gathered along the way. From architecture to acoustics, from musicology to political philosophy, I collect, assemble, build, dream, and experiment, hoping to generate meaning. I choose spaces (or create them) for their symbolic, material, and acoustic qualities, then determine the sound source as the initial presence, the action I impose on it (permutation, transposition, displacement…), and the channels of capture and transmission. Once the arrangement is set, the scenarios remain open, and through the magic of the phenomenon, sound reconstructs space, space contains bodies, bodies influence sound, and I tell myself stories: sound takes form, and the author disappears. Then sound wanders again. From a known elsewhere to an indistinct other. There is always a starting point…” — Lauren Tortil
After obtaining her DNEP in 2010 at HEAR in Strasbourg—where she navigated between two disciplines: sound art in the Phonon workshop led by Philippe Lepeut and design studies under Pierre Doze—she left France to join the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Israel/Palestine, focusing her research on the political nature of art and design. Returning to France in 2011, she entered ENSBA Lyon, where she graduated in 2013 with honors in spatial design.
She has participated in several group exhibitions, including Imaginez Maintenant at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, Vortex Tour at La Chaufferie (Strasbourg), Barbur Performing and Lost in the Bubble in Israel/Palestine, and more recently at the Sunset residency for Existe-t’île? with the Manuel collective.
