As part of the exhibition “ECHO DELAY REVERB: American Art, Francophone Thought”, Lamin Fofana takes over the programme of the 37 dB listening room with a presentation of Corps Perdu, an original sound work. This piece marks the first chapter of a new trilogy in which the New York–based artist and musician continues his exploration of transforming foundational theoretical and poetic texts by writers of the African diasporas into musical compositions.

Corps Perdu offers a sonic interpretation of the poetry collection by Aimé Césaire, from which the work lends its title. Within these ten poems by Aimé Césaire published in 1950, the musician identifies a moment of transition in the poetic work. Here, the fervour of revolt that characterised the early expression of Négritude is tempered by elegiac modes of heightened introspection. Echoing the Martinican poet’s surrealist visions of emancipatory symbioses between bodies and nature as a fertile ground for an imaginary of anti-colonial resistance, Lamin Fofana proposes a sound journey structured like a fugue, punctuated by the rustling of enigmatic vegetation and the crackle of tropical rainfall. The work creates an immersive soundscape marked by the tensions and frictions of a world in collapse, poised on the threshold of awakening, opening a breach between imaginaries of liberation both past and present.

Corps Perdu is accompanied by an excerpt from History of the Voice, a meditation on the notion of the vestige articulated through the assemblage of sonic remnants – traces of presence, environmental utterances and reverberant echoes. Through the transformation of texts, archives, vocal fragments and field recordings into musical experience, Fofana composes speculative zones of listening traversed by questions of memory, migration, alienation and belonging.

The programme dedicated to Lamin Fofana’s Corps Perdu will unfold across two other events at the Palais de Tokyo:

The programme of the 37dB of Palais de Tokyo is designed to host occasional events, while remaining permanently accessible during exhibition seasons with an audiovisual programme that operates on an on/off basis, allowing it to be activated or deactivated depending on the events taking place. This space provides a place to pause and reflect within the exhibition route, offering a seasonal selection specifically curated for each period. Artists, musicians, and composers may also extend into other, more event-based formats, such as concerts and DJ sets, including in other areas of the Palais de Tokyo.

• This programme is accessible on presentation of an exhibition ticket