Workshop by Yann Coppier.
This workshop focuses on music as a universal language inasmuch as sound can reach a different area of the brain than language. The psyche thinks in pictures, which implies a plasticity and elasticity that in the translation into language may lose meaning and emotive nuances. Similarly, sound is able to hold on to what we contain, which speaks to different parts of the body. We may be moved by sound and experience pictures of landscapes or moods. We do not need a translation as music does not require specific translations. If a flute describes a yearning, it does not matter which part of the world you come from. You will be able to feel it.
Yann has been instructed to invite people with a migrant background to the workshop. To this end, as the framework for the workshop, Yann decides that the participants must create music together on the spot. Since Yann does not want the workshop to focus on the migrant label, he is inviting the participants by virtue of them being musicians. Thus, this study is also about how we can look past the labels of migration, immigration, them/us and so on. By inviting musicians, Yann places the participants in the same category as himself, as he is also a musician. It becomes another point of departure for meeting each other, which means that it is the music that creates a shortcut to a person. When Cahit shares his flute play, he opens up some stories as the stories live in the instruments.
During this workshop, Yann worked with a missing centre in relation to the sound. Instead, there was a lot of positions where you could experience the sound differently. The circular and explorative are part of Yann's own artistic work. Because Yann has not created a centre, he makes the audience move around in the sound to experience it in different ways – according to the persons’ current position. Because the sound is circular, you move accordingly. Thus, as you move around in this space, you will be curious to understand the different positions in the space.
Yann is preoccupied with decentralising the music, which may be compared to Artistic Response as a method that strives to remove a central figure. This makes it more inclusive for people in minority positions. Thus, it is about power and who possesses the power. In that lies a dream or ambition to decentralise management, control and power in relation to what takes place in the community. I find that today, the power is far removed from the people. One might dream of the power returning to the people, which are some of the reflections that this workshop may spur.
