As part of the “ECHO DELAY REVERB: American art, Francophone thought” exhibition, Charles Gaines presents Manifestos 3 (2018/2019) in the 37dB programme, a musical composition for piano that engages with three significant manifestos. First, a speech by Martin Luther King Jr., delivered in 1967 at Newcastle University in the UK, where the leader of the Civil Rights Movement identifies racism, poverty, and war as the three urgent issues of the contemporary world. The second text “Princes and Powers” by James Baldwin, published in 1957, is a report on the 1956 Congress of Black Artists and Writers in Paris, organised by the publishing house Présence Africaine. This event, held on the eve of African independence and the struggles against segregation in the United States, brought together intellectual figures, primarily anglophone and francophone, to debate the cultural emancipation of Black peoples worldwide. The third movement is a translation of “Visionary Recital” (1994) by artist and musician Terry Adkins where he reflects on his own approach to art making. In total, Manifestos 3 brings together three important cultural and political voices and their varied approaches to envisioning a more just world.

With his “Manifestos” Charles Gaines – an American conceptual artist and musician – has been experimenting since 2008 with the transcription of texts into musical compositions. This conversion is the result of the application by the artist of a set of rules on a selection of essays which have for only criteria to be political or critical advocacy.  After excerpting the manifestos, the letters A to H in the text are transcribed into musical notes, with H, for example, becoming a B-flat major, as in baroque-era musical notation. The other letters, which do not exist in the Anglophone musical notation system, as well as the spaces between words, are indicated as silences or rests. The simultaneous projection of the text alongside with the musical composition highlights the narrative role or the impression of dissonance that music can play in the emotional reception of these texts’ content. In line with post-structuralist reflections on language as a relational experience shaped by multiple factors, Charles Gaines examines the objective and subjective aspects in the way a discourse takes meaning and affects us.

Sound Laboratory, Room 37 transforms into 37db when the Palais de Tokyo hands over this oval space to artists, musicians, and composers to explore the exhibition through an immersive listening experience. These invitations go beyond the realm of contemporary art, expanding both its boundaries and decibels.

• This programme is accessible on presentation of an exhibition ticket