Sound poetry creation workshops

As part of the Printemps des poètes festival, installed in Arthur Rimbaud’s house, at the suggestion of the museum team, I designed and ran sound poetry creation workshops for children (schools) and the public.

In this very inspiring place, the house where Arthur Rimbaud lived from 15 to 21 years (transformed into a museum by the city of Charleville-Mézières), I had installed a sound “Digital Creation Studio”. It’s a playful, multi-faceted space (high-quality microphones, musical instruments, video projection, surprising sound objects, synthesizers, computers), in which each person is invited to enter into a process of “creative sound fantasy”. Play with your voice, with objects, with instruments, and then record your productions, put them online right away, so you can find them later, listen to them again, reinvest in them, download them, thanks to a QR Code.

This creative proposition has worked just as well for children coming to class, who experience an exceptional moment, as it has for museum visitors, who are invited into an incongruous and overflowing creativity, discovering themselves when at first they didn’t dare. The device and the mediation method are at the service of the discovery of one’s own creativity, which is a journey.

One of the workshops with a CM2 class was filmed by Maël Gilson. I’ve included all the rushes he shot, exhaustively. These are quite exceptional documents, which enable us to witness in real time, as if we were there, my method of mediating and relating to people, based on a framework that adapts to the way people listen. For one of the classes, for example, I had them draw their music after making it, because I felt that this would be a way for them to make it their own, and that it matched the energy of the group. I always have several proposals “in reserve”, adaptable according to the energy of the moment. In this way, each workshop is a cooperative process to which I invite the participants: we co-create it, and my role is to authorize this type of framework.

Sound poetry is a little-known but fascinating field of poetry. Born in the middle of the twentieth century, and linked to the question of recording, the microphone and the tape recorder, sound poetry today joins the approaches of ASMR, for example. It involves using a variety of tools to create strange, and therefore poetic, sounds: voices, technical devices, instruments, objects... It’s a very playful detour, a game with today’s language, which is no longer made up solely of words, but also of images and sounds.

Workshop proposal texts

For schools:
Poetry is also about sound! Whispered or shouted voices, backwards, forwards, in invented or known languages, rubbings, noises, atmospheres... Multidisciplinary artist Benoît Labourdette will lead sound creation workshops for your class. Your productions will then be available online for use in the classroom and by parents.

Before the session, you can ask students to share their favorite ASMR videos, and you can also explore sound poetry (or Lettrist poetry) with them.

For all audiences:
Poetry is also about sound! Whispered or shouted voices, backwards or forwards, in invented or known languages, rubbing, noises, ambiences... Come and take part with multi-disciplinary artist Benoît Labourdette in incredible, never-before-seen sound creations, and then share them with your friends and family and on your social networks.

You’ll learn all the secrets of microphones, and discover poetic worlds you never knew existed.

Space for sharing sound creations

Here you can listen to all the sound productions made by workshop participants.

https://www.benoitlabourdette.com/_docs/projets/2023/2023_charleville_printemps_des_poetes/